Why can't I download entire folders from icloud.com? It will only allow me to download individual files.

Same issue after more then one year. It seems that Apple does not care about creating a professional solution in terms of cloud storage. icloud drive does not sync properly either on windows 10 using their crappy client. They have to learn a lot from competing solutions.

Csound1, your first post says the path is, ~/library/mobile folders

Csound1 wrote:

Then you went to the wrong library, The symbol at the head of the line is your home symbol, you probably went to the library at the root of your hard drive.

Go to ~/library/mobile folders, it is a duplicate of the iCloud Drive.

Paste the path into the "Go to folder" option

Your other post says the path is ~/library/mobile documents

Csound1 wrote:

Yes there is, just do as I said and paste that path into the Go To Folder dialog (on the Go menu)

You can understand why he was having trouble finding the folder

Anyway, even on my system you cannot see the contents of the "Mobile Documents" folder in the Finder. You can however see the contents if you use the terminal.

$ ls -l

total 0

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 15 May 09:13 243LU875E5~com~apple~movietrailers

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 22 May 2015 3ZAG2EM5L8~com~frogmindgames~dodge

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 22 May 2015 8XJ6WJ8Z84~com~chairentertainment~IB2

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 8 Dec 19:54 8Z3V4F58RK~com~ustwo~monumentvalley

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 24 May 2015 DA33APV56V~com~aetn~aetv~ios~watch

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 22 May 2015 F3LWYJ7GM7~com~apple~garageband10

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 28 May 10:25 F3LWYJ7GM7~com~apple~mobilegarageband

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 10 Apr 03:56 F3LWYJ7GM7~com~apple~musicmemos~ideas

drwxr-xr-x 5 gcerullo staff 170 25 Oct 2015 F6266T9T75~com~apple~iMovie

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 22 May 2015 J73TJQ2H74~com~cateater~funapps~stopmotion

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 17 Apr 08:36 RZKWAK3484~com~popcap~ios~PvZ2

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 23 Jul 2015 W28***8XTF~au~com~minimega~bonza

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 25 Oct 2015 com~apple~Automator

drwxr-xr-x 2 gcerullo staff 68 22 May 2015 com~apple~CloudDocs

drwxr-xr-x 10 gcerullo staff 340 15 Feb 15:02 com~apple~Keynote

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 22 May 2015 com~apple~Notes

drwxr-xr-x 9 gcerullo staff 306 16 Oct 2015 com~apple~Numbers

drwxr-xr-x 11 gcerullo staff 374 25 Oct 2015 com~apple~Pages

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 25 Oct 2015 com~apple~Preview

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 25 Oct 2015 com~apple~QuickTimePlayerX

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 25 Oct 2015 com~apple~ScriptEditor2

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 25 Oct 2015 com~apple~TextEdit

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 22 May 2015 com~apple~TextInput

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 22 May 2015 com~apple~mail

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 17 Sep 2015 com~apple~mobilemail

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 22 May 2015 com~apple~shoebox

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 22 May 2015 com~apple~system~spotlight

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 19 Jun 2015 iCloud~au~com~minimega~bonzanatgeo

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 28 May 10:25 iCloud~com~apple~configurator~ui

drwxr-xr-x 6 gcerullo staff 204 22 May 19:22 iCloud~com~apple~iBooks

drwxr-xr-x 4 gcerullo staff 136 21 Mar 20:56 iCloud~com~apple~iBooks~iTunesU

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 26 Jun 2015 iCloud~com~apple~itunesu

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 17 Sep 2015 iCloud~com~apple~mobilesafari

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 22 May 2015 iCloud~com~apple~ncplugin~weather

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 15 Jan 21:41 iCloud~com~cateater~funapps~stopmotion

drwxr-xr-x 3 gcerullo staff 102 8 Apr 23:07 iCloud~com~idevices~idevicesconnect~homemetadata

Doesn't seem like you can. You can select all the contents of a folder and download at one time, but not a folder itself.

Must be the way these "folders" are kept at iCloud.com.

And FYI... if he turned off iCloud Drive on his Mac, that would have deleted them from the Mac, but not the cloud. That's my guess as to how he did this.

Not deleting them from his Mac WHEN iCloud Drive was enabled.

Feedback for Apple goes here >>> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Then you went to the wrong library, The symbol at the head of the line is your home symbol, you probably went to the library at the root of your hard drive.

Go to ~/library/mobile folders, it is a duplicate of the iCloud Drive.

Paste the path into the "Go to folder" option

Are you trying to download them from the iCloud.com web site or are you trying to copy them from the iCloud Drive folder in the Finder?

I have no problem copying folders full of stuff from my iCloud Drive in the Finder.

Gino,

the problem is that beaconbee said the documents have been deleted from the Mac.

I deleted them from my mac to free up disc space.

And when downloading from iCloud the nested folder structure should be preserved. I can select all documents at once inside a folder but not the subfolders. Is there a way to download the tree of subfolders preserving its structure? I can open folder by folder, enter ⌘A to select all documents in the folder, then download them.

Elaborating on your Terminal command:

To open an iCloud drive folder using the Terminal, why not use the "open" command? To reveal the Keynote application collection, we could paste the following into the Terminal:

open ~/Library/mobile\ documents/com~apple~Keynote

Replace Keynote by the name of any other application collection.

You need to understand that the "folder" you see in the web browser when you log in to iCloud.com is not an actual folder it is only a graphical representation of a folder. They are only links (URLs) that navigate to a directory (folder) that holds the content. That is why you can't select them to download the "folder" and all its content. You can do that from the Finder.

Now, why you can see the content in the "folders" when you log in to iCloud.com but not when you look at your iCloud Drive in the Finder I don't know. That does not make sense to me. There are plenty of hidden folders in iCloud Drive created by various applications but they are also hidden from view when you look at your iCloud Drive from the web site view at iCloud.com.

léonie wrote:

Gino,

the problem is that beaconbee said the documents have been deleted from the Mac.

I deleted them from my mac to free up disc space.

And when downloading from iCloud the nested folder structure should be preserved. I can select all documents at once inside a folder but not the subfolders. Is there a way to download the tree of subfolders preserving its structure? I can open folder by folder, enter ⌘A to select all documents in the folder, then download them.

léonie, you are correct and I said the same thing. That he can download them using the Finder, folder structure intact, but he now claims to not be able to see the files and folders in the Finder only when he logs in to iCloud.com.

Elaborating on your Terminal command:

To open an iCloud drive folder using the Terminal, why not use the "open" command? To reveal the Keynote application collection, we could paste the following into the Terminal:

open ~/Library/mobile\ documents/com~apple~Keynote

Replace Keynote by the name of any other application collection.

Yep, that works and if he used it with "ls" command like I did to reveal the folder structure of his iCloud drive he may be able to access the files and folders he is try to download.

If you get a blank Keynote window it is because you don't have anything in the Keynote folder in iCloud Drive.

Issue the following command in a Terminal window.

cd ~/library/Mobile\ Documents

Then issue the follow command

ls -l

Then post up the output like I did in my previous post.

Yes there is, just do as I said and paste that path into the Go To Folder dialog (on the Go menu)

They are already on your Mac, why do you need another copy?