How do you pause iCloud Drive from syncing? It is using all of my mobile data!

Thank you, jlinaschke! I just downloaded the app and it worked great. They have a 7-day unrestricted trial and it took me only about 10 minutes to be convinced to pay for it. It works perfectly, is fully customizable, and so easy to use. Not only does it work for iCloud, but you can block or allow any app you wish. It saves me from disabling other data hungry apps one by one as well, such as Dropbox, CrashPlan, etc. If you need to allow a certain app temporarily, e.g., you need to enable Dropbox for a minute to share a file, it's only a click away.

Hi,

I did soonmy iMac27"X10.12.3and it worked:

I bought a 400MB data plan to last my the day while I work remotely in a cafe while abroad, 5 minutes later the data was empty, iCloud was synchronising data from my Mac. No away to turn it off without in a simple manner. I assume Apple will get around to this, they are good at listening to their customers, just a matter of time. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

True it's better to find a solution now rather than waiting. I found an app called Trip node which does exactly what I need it to do. It's good to hope though that these simple things will eventuallly be incorporated into the the actual Mac OS though someday like it is already in IOS.

After a system wide crash I was stuck in "iCloud Drive making my fans go berserk" **** as my data is syncing back.

Had to turn it off. Not only to get sane again (listening to fans spinning at 6200 rpm for more than sex hours makes your brain go quite crazy), but also to actually let the computer live. It took more power than it could give, was down to 20% battery power when I unchecked iCloud Drive.

Apple – Please invest in a pause button for both iCloud Drive as well as the Picure sync!!!

😐

Also super frustrating that there are "X" icons to stop certain iCloud sync processes that are entirely unresponsive. Sort of a PC thing to do.

Don't know about pausing, but you can keep it from using Cellular Service. In the iPhone settings, open up iCloud, then iCloud drive. Uncheck the box to use Cellular Data.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

Or you can use your Apple ID to register with this site and go the Apple BugReporter. Supposedly you will get an answer if you submit feedback.

Feedback via Apple Developer

I just thought of the same thing regarding saving data when travelling. If i understand you correctly, you want to be able to pause iCloud Drive sync on your MacBook Pro when using your iPhone's internet connection on your Mac. If so that's the same question i have. I can pause dropbox and google drive but don't see a pause for iCloud on the Mac. Only option i see for now is to uncheck iCloud in system preferences but then that deletes all the iCloud content on the Mac, although not the content on the server.

My only option is to not work from iCloud Drive when travelling and put the documents in a temp folder, then when back, transfer to iCloud Drive.  is not too good with internet services, it's almost like their achilles heels which unfortunately is a big deal as this is what ties all the devices together. So as a company offering iCloud Drive services, i think they will implement this but when I do not know. It would be fine for a world where internet is abundant but unfortunately we are not there yet for the whole world.

Did you really buy the flagship MacBook Pro without checking whether it had an optical drive or network port first? Lunacy.

I agree that not being able to pause iCloud uploads, however, is awfully frustrating, and still a problem. For this reason I'm likely going to have to cancel my subscription and move to another service. Which is annoying because I wanted to get it all tied together nicely via iCloud.

Try this:

Go to Firewall in System Preferences.

Turn it (the Firewall) on if it is not already turned on.

Click Firewall Options.

Click the + sign to add an app to the List.

Find and select the Finder.app file on the window that opens.

This should be at /System/Library/CoreServices folder

After adding it to the list; Change "Allow incoming connections" to "Block incoming connections".

Click Ok.

When you want to resume sycning, just change go back to the firewall options and change the Finder's settings back to "Allow incoming connections".

Hope this trick helps?

This did the trick. Back to lighting fast 🙂

That's one way in Firewall... didn't know that, BUT, u can also turn off icloud drive...

Many users may not know this because Apple doesn't make it obvious BUT even with icloud drive turned off, the files are still "ready to resume"

The fact people are not aware of this is :

1. The dialog popup when u turn off icloud drive is "miss-leading" You might even say it could say the same type of miss-leading dialog that happened with itunes and songs being deleted accidently.

2.During syncing of files with iCould drive, they do NOT appear on icloud.com... Furthermore, after u turn iCloud Drive off, any files in the ICloud folder on Mac will be "deleted" This is a scary thought, BUT the files are still in cache...

After you turn iCloud drive back on, the ONLY indication u can go by is "usage" bar at the bottom of System Preferences, iCloud. (This is how I found out about this)

3. After turning iCloud drive back on, if u drag the same files/folders that were syncing last time, they will "resume" syncing.

Long story short,, its probably easier just to "block" connection in firewall, *but* at least u can safely turn off your Mac in all cases.

Hope this help everyone if u actually wanted to know more.

Check out a utility called TripMode https://www.tripmode.ch/ — it detects that you're on mobile data (not sure how) and by default disables ALL data traffic, and you can enable things by app (i.e. allow Mail, Safari, but not Backblaze, iCloud, etc.). It's awesome and only $8.