iCloud Documents & Desktop Folder not syncing to second Mac

Question

Level 1

5 points

iCloud Documents & Desktop Folder not syncing to second Mac

I have iCloud Documents & Desktop folder syncing turned on on both Macs. Here's what I did.

1. Turned it on on the MacBook Pro with a few files.

2. Turned it on on the MacBook Air with many files (140,000 - 10 gb). It saw the files from the MacBook Pro. It uploaded all of its files into its own folder. Then I merged everything into the base Documents folder and deleted the separate MacBook Air folder.

3. Came back to the MacBook Pro and none of the files from Air are downloading.

4. I CAN see the files from the Air in the iOS iCloud Drive app and on iCloud.com

Is there any way to force a sync on the MacBook Pro?

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 10:39 AM

Reply

Answer 1

davecom Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 21, 2016 10:48 AM in response to davecom

And just after I posted this they magically started downloading. I guess you just have to give it a while. Maybe it's timed to check every 15 minutes or something like that.

Reply

Answer 2

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Sep 22, 2016 7:40 PM in response to davecom

Keep in mind, it's not like FTP where a server just dumps bits to a destination.

The iCloud syncing process requires analysis each time it starts up.

"What is the state of every file on both ends of this relationship?"

"Who needs what?"

"Which files have the same filename but a different timestamp?"

Plus if data is being "sent" to the cloud, this is done over, typically, a much slower pipe then downloading has access to.

Reply