I have several files that I've worked on separately on my iPad and my Macbook Pro. Some of these files have a little icon opposite the filename in the Finder window shaped like a cloud with a down arrow coming out the bottom. What does this mean?
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
Well thats not an answer really as there are a number of icons and I can not get any info on what they mean. I have no idea when my files are in sync across two computers. One min they have a dotted cloud then maybe a complete line cloud then a progress bar. There is no way of telling me what is going on with an consistency. The very worst thing and the thing that will be making me ask for my money back I have been spending on this is that i can force sync in any way. They it does it automatically but it just does not. Sometimes it does ....sometimes it does not.... I keep getting a warning that there are two versions that are not synced when there should not be. WHAT !? Its madness. The only reason I went with them was because dropbox, the best service out there, is much more expensive. Any ideas? cheers
As an Apple support guy explained it to me today, a cloud with a down arrow means the item is IN the cloud. A cloud with no arrow at all means it's in the PROCESS of being uploaded, and if you have the "Cloud Drive" window open which also has a chart showing the size, like "50.77 GB," and there is an upward arrow next to the figure, that shows the files are being UPloaded. That is the equivalent of a progress bar, because the "size" has changed from 50.77 to 50.32 in just the couple of minutes I have been typing this. I don't know about the files with no arrows, which in my case are "Pixelmator," "TextEdit" and "Preview." Pixelmator is cloud-based anyway; I don't know about TextEdit and Preview. Anyway, I've determined to GO TO BED WITH THE COMPUTER RUNNING, hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, the machine will have done its magic and copied all my files to the Cloud, wherever it is located.
Means they are stored in the cloud and you need to download them.
Peter
Pixelmator is not cloud-based unless you have chosen to store its files there in:
Menu > Apple > System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Options... > Documents
The same with any App including TextEdit. Preview has no native files so you can choose to save that also anywhere you like.
Peter
Interesting. I came unto this discussion because I had a research article on iCloud in pdf that refused to open. It had the download arrow with the cloud as you stated. Peter is right. I could not open the article on my Mac, but went unto iCloud via Safari and it was there. So I downloaded it, then replaced the same copy on my Mac on the iCloud tab in finder and now there is a local copy on my Mac.
So like Peter said, it seems this means the document with the downward arrow is a copy in the cloud that does not have a local copy on your Mac. When I tried to delete it from the iCloud finder on the Mac, I got the warning that it will be permanently deleted and there's no way to recover it. So thanks Peter. Now I know what that means and when I see such files, will make sure I download them so I have a local copy for backup.
Borddude i agree about the lack of force syncing. This is particularly true when you consider that not everyone has good internet access so synching can go wrong at anytime which i've experienced. It's always good to have a way to force it to sync so one knows the task is done. Hope it came right with you thou.
Cheers!
I find similar inconsistency. I have files with little clouds with down arrows and some with up arrows. I'm hoping the up arrow means it is being uploaded but there is no progress indicator anywhere to confirm this so I keep checking the Info on the file or folder or drive to see if the numbers are changing in a direction that confirms my guess.
My situation involves a migration from an old Mac to a new one with a Seagate backup drive making the trip to the new one very smoothly. The old Mac has a 1T spinning platter and the new one is 250 GB solid state drive so obviously I have to move files around. I think the thing that bothers me the most is that the system gives me almost no feedback about what is going on. Naturally I get impatient after a few hours and poke things which generally doesn't help.
The Manage Storage option and the iCloud Preferences in System Preferences also shift things about in unanticipated ways at one point packing all my desktop files off to the cloud. The transparency of the process to the user needs a lot of work.
from my Ubuntu Notebook
Cheers!
What does the little cloud with a down arrow opposite a file name mean in iCloud Drive?
