I activated "Optimize Mac Storage" in iCloud settings, which created a Desktop folder in iCloud Drive (amongst others), but then again deactivated this option. I also unchecked "Desktop & Documents Folders".
Now every time I delete the Desktop folder in iCloud Drive, it reappears after just a few seconds. Does anyone now how to get rid of this unnecessary folder?
Thank you.
Daniel
iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS Sierra (10.12)
Holy crap batman! It worked. I had iCloud Drive open on both my iPhone and MacBook. From my MacBook's Finder, I deleted the empty Documents folder from iCloud Drive and QUICKLY emptied the trash. And voila! After a few seconds iCloud refreshed itself and the Documents folder was deleted from my iOS device as well! I then followed the same steps to delete the empty Desktop folder.
Amazing.
I deleted the Desktop folder from iCloud Drive and then immediately emptied the trash before the folder had time to reappear in iCloud Drive. The folder did not reappear. This worked for the Documents folder too.
Are you leaving the Desktop & Documents Folders unchecked? After unchecking you should get a dialog box asking if you'd like to 'Turn Off'.
Have you rebooted since deactivating the feature?
It's possible there are some hidden cached files there.
I do. And I also did get the message, but unfortunately the folder keeps reappearing.
I just rebooted once again after enabling and disabling the feature, but the Desktop folder keeps reappearing (not the Documents folder, just Desktop).
So, it would seem that folder is now considered a system folder of some sort, and can't be removed.
Or it still has some invisible/hidden content preventing it from being deleted.
Hopefully a 10th level OSX terminal wizard will see this and offer a suggestion.
Thanks for your answer. Do you know if there's a way to just hide this folder manually? I really don't care if it's in my iCloud Drive or not... I just don't want to see it.
That will be what the wizard would offer. I have no such terminal skills.
I had this same issue and couldn't stand for an empty, redundant folder in my iCloud.
I found this as a solution. I made sure that everything was back in place on my desktop and that the iCloud folder was empty and then ran the rm -R command in Terminal. Once you have the command in you can simply drag your file into terminal to fill in the rest. It will look like this
rm -R /Users/YourMacsName/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Desktop
Worked perfect for me and here is the link that I found it on.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2082021/master-the-command-line-deleting-files-a nd-folders.htm
Hope this helps!!
Delete Desktop folder in iCloud Drive
