Does iCloud drive use up hard drive storage space?

Well this is disappointing. I thought icloud would keep files off my drive..when really it is an access point for accessing files between computers.

I think we all need an effortless way to have access to files that are kept off your local drive until you need them. icloud is misleading

Any other solutions?

I hope you people realize this is a total scam. You buy a ton of space to keep stuff off your hard drive and Apple turns around and puts that very same stuff back on your hard drive. And to really stick it to you, if you try and delete that cancerous mass from your hard drive it deletes in on the cloud and all your other devices. And we'er paying for this?? I'm totally ending my iCloud service. If anybody at Apple happens to read this, I will explain how it should work. iCloud drive is a completely remote drive that you can only access if you have the internet. Which I have all the time. Anything you do on that drive has nothing to do with your hard drive on your computers. Why it doesn't work like that already is beyond my understanding.

Mark White

That's like calling hard drive backup a scam. It's just a copy of what you already have on your drive!

What bugs me is that Apple provides no ability to search the iCloud drive on the web. That's primitive.

I clearly don't want a backup of what's on my drive. I have plenty of hard drives laying around for that, what i want is another drive that has stuff on it I can access from anywhere. Just so you understand, When you copy something from your hard drive to to the cloud, it clearly says it's going to remove it from your hard drive and put it in your cloud. Which would be great, but it doesn't do that, it actually still keeps a copy of whatever you have in a hidden folder. So for me it's a scam.

If you use Dropbox for cloud storage you can indeed remove whatever folders you wish from your local HDD

I have Dropbox listed on my sidebar in finder and drag any files I wish to place there.

In the Dropbox settings menu, there is an option called 'selective sync' which allows you to choose which folders appear on your local machine and thus, synced to Dropbox.

I upload movies to a folder I've named 'movies upload' on Dropbox via the finder and when they have all uploaded, I then use my browser and move the files from the 'movies upload' folder into a different folder which isn't synced to my computer and hey presto, the files are are indeed on the cloud, but no longer taking up space on my local machine.

:-)

I understand the logic of having the iCloud files still accessible on the hard drive.

What I'd like to do is move the location where this happens.

A mirror of iCloud is saved in Library/Mobile Documents. (If you click on this it takes you to the iCloud folder.)

What I'd like is the ability to locate this on the secondary drive on my iMac. I have a small 256gb SSD as my main drive, and then a separate larger spinning HD for file storage. I'd like iCloud to use the spinning disc instead.

my main reason for finding this thread is to figure out a way to get that iCloud local folder on an external drive. My question is regarding alias folders. Is it possible to move the iCloud document folder to an external and then replace the original with the alias folder? I do this for my logic plugins to save space.

ANybody have luck luck trying this?

I don't think it's a scam, but I do have sympathy with your frustration over this. Why do Apple make MacBooks with tiny solid state drives then force us to download everything in iCloud to them. Why not treat them the same as iOS devices and allow us to download selectively?

Maybe I'm looking at this backwards, but it seems to me the solution is simple. The large numbers of files on iCloud must not be used on your Macbook Air regularly. If you have large projects or huge files with high resolution etc. you must be using a desktop computer to do much of that work. It's in the desktop that the solution lies. Create a "swap" folder on the desktop computer that can hold files not currently needed on the limiting hardware (Macbook air or other low storage capacity device). Presumably your desktop contains lots of disk space, either onboard or physically attached. Drag those items that are not needed on the low storage device into the swap folder on the desktop computer. Then iCloud will move it to the swap folder with its usual warning about taking it off of iCloud. You gain nothing on the desktop. Storage of those files takes the same amount of room on iCloud drive or on your hard drive. BUT, through the awesomeness of syncing, the same folder removes itself from your low storage device and this DOES remove it from that hard drive. It is no longer available on that low storage device, but do you really nave nothing on the cloud that you never use on your Macbook Air? As stated in one of the earlier posts, using iCloud as your main offsite backup poses significant hazards. Best to be using time machine or some other backup service or strategy on that large capacity hard drive of your desktop computer. The beauty of the Macbook Air is it's size and weight and overall cool. It was never designed to be the workhorse of your digital world. Letting your desktop take that responsibility allows you to have what you need on that light beautiful laptop while not overburdening the storage limitations that allowed it to be so light and thin.

A much simpler solution would be for Apple to allow us to selectively download files from iCloud to Our MacBooks, in the same way that we can on iOS devices.

Point.

That's a nice solution, but I would also like to use iCloud drive as a backup tool, so it has all the files in a particular folder.

Exactamundo !! There are others out there !!!!

So very insightful , the bigger picture !!!

So you come back as a starlite, Tomorrowland comes to mind.....