Syncing specific folders to iCloud

Yeah, this is actually super frustrating. I recently switched from Android to iPhone and little by little I'm regretting it. The fact that Apple insists on what folders you can sync, and insists on making you random photo albums that you cannot delete is almost insulting. These products are extremely expensive, and I'm wondering what for? A flashy looking device? An aesthetically pleasing operating system? Great, but why can't I import the folders of photos off of my iPhone as they ARE without iCloud, but yet I can't choose what folders I'd like to sync to it? This seems elementary. Seriously. You'd expect more out of the fabled, monolithic tech giant.

I think my problem follows in this vein. Apparently iCloud leaves the original copy on your hard drive. So although your computer tells you it is on iCloud, it is really stored on your hard drive. So when my daughter uploaded a huge group of files to my iCloud, it ate up ALL of my laptops storage space. I would be happy to designate my home mac as the host for all my iCloud files, so, i.e., when I upload to iCloud the original file gets stored on my home mac. I am having to go back to Dropbox, which allows me to toggle which files are hosted/synced on my dropbox. I am disappointed by that, because I really prefer Apple products :-(

As far as specific folders synced, that is still my issue. I don't want a copy both places, I am trying to free up hard drive space and want my only copy to be hosted on iCloud.

iCloud was never designed to be an online storage system, and as not being one is what it is supposed to be it is working very well, OneDrive was designed to be offsite storage, it also works very well at the things it was designed to do.

You should use whatever works best at its designed function, particularly when the function and your needs coincide.

My understanding about synchronization in general I believe to be quite sufficient.

My understanding about iCloud Drive is exactly as I wrote it. I don't know what iCloud drive was designed for, i.e. which end-user question it tries to answer. If you can help me (and other apple users) with understanding iCloud better I am sure we all have less frustration.

I do know that iCloud is not fulfilling my initial end-user expectations, which were possibly flawed by marketing messages or wishful experience with other products.

Judging from my experience, it was not designed as a 2Tb cloud storage where multiple devices could synchronize subsets of data to local storage to perform local activity (such as viewing or editing a movie), but it did give me this impression initially.

I am still in the process of sticking 1.2Tb of GoPro movies in my iCloud drive, but in the process I had to disable the iCloud drive on my windows laptop and my macbook, as it only had a 100Gb free space. On my iPad Pro and iPhone X the file browser works well, because I can select which files to keep locally downloaded.

Thank you for your help.

Hi Gail,

I appreciate your write-up. As you indicate in the writing: Apple is 'unique' in it's convention as a cloud service. I think this is why the naming and actual features are generally misunderstood by new/prospective users. I hope apple will do one of two things:

1) make the naming more clear, to clearly identify that icloud drive is NOT a single file repository for maintaining and sharing all your data across devices.

2) expand the features to make the above functionality available. I believe there is a market, especially with existing apple users, to keep massive amounts of data in a cloud drive to be available and used across devices.

With my iPhone X, DSLR and GoPro collection each vacation rakes up around 300Gb of photo and video data, and for the right price I am happy to keep it in iCloud. Now I have to tweak icloud drive to keep it usable.

Anyway, I want to thank your for your answer and articles, it is much appreciated.

Erwin

I also understand and desire the need the OP is mentioning. Especially with Apple allowing for more and more data to be stored. It would be silly to assume all locations I use my iCloud Drive would be able to support the entire drive.

agrandj wrote:

All files synced with iCloud will be stored on the server under my iCloud ID, yes.

The question is whether you can elect to sync only specific files/folders (i.e. continuously synchronize) with a physical hard drive. Google Drive allows you to choose which items are downloaded and synchronized with your device. Everything else is stored remotely (or on G Drive/iCloud) and remains accessible as long as you can connect to the internet. Here is a screenshot of what I am describing:

Just to be as clear as possible, another example: say that I have a computer with a 1GB hard drive, and I have an iCloud account with 200GB of storage, which I have filled to capacity. Since my computer can only store 1GB on its own, I cannot sync all of my iCloud folders. So, can I choose to sync only 1 folder that contains 1GB? In other words, can i choose to only download and synchronize 1GB of data instead of all 200GB?

OK, so you cannot "selectively" sync iCloud Drive files on a Mac. You can selectively download to a device - the iCloud Drive app on a device will show all of your available files, and you can download whichever ones you want. But on a Mac, iCloud Drive downloads your most recent file as space allows, leaving the remaining ones on iCloud Drive until you manually download them. You can also turn on Optimization which will free up even more space on your Mac, and put more items on the Drive:

Store your files in iCloud and save space on your device

The files that you keep in iCloud Drive use your iCloud storage. And as long as you have enough space in iCloud and on your device, you can store as many files as you like.

If you need more space on your device, iCloud Drive can help. Your Mac keeps all of your recent files on your computer, but keeps your older ones only in iCloud, ready for you to download when you need them again. If you want to free up more space on your Mac, we can help. On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can search and browse files from all of your devices and download them only as you need them.

Here are a couple of iCloud Drive support articles that might help:

iCloud Drive FAQ - Apple Support

iCloud Drive Usage and Instructions

Cheers,

GB

Thats the point, one can't manually upload folders to iCloud, only files.

People are saying that the *entire* desktop and *entire* documents folder are too broad to sync all at once. READ the examples above for why this might be so.

This is silly.

Tell Apple.

Here

You can switch back to using Android devices if they do what you want and iPhones don't.

Do you not understand what synchronization is?

erwinvb wrote:

I don’t know what iCloud Drive was designed for.

iCloud - Apple

Seems short sighted on Apples part. That’s what folks need.

Link doesn’t work