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

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.

If you paste that path into Go to Folder you will end up in Mobile Documents, that is the actual command being pasted in on my Mac

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.

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.