Documents and Desktop folders in iCloud

I thought that when I upgraded to Sierra and synced the Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud, they would "mirror" -- much as they do with Dropbox. Now it appears that they have actually moved into the Cloud.

No, they are mirrored. You just don't see them in the Home folder. You only see them in iCloud Drive, not in the Home folder. However, I don't understand why that is concerning. The iCloud Drive is on your Mac, so the Desktop and Documents folders would also be on your Mac. See my previous post on what actually happens. You can safely ignore everything that DTM Boulder 2 has posted. It is completely and utterly wrong.

1. If I lose Wi-Fi, how can I work on my documents if the Documents folder no longer exists on my iMac?

Well, they actually do still exist on your Mac. You are falling for the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) being peddled by DTM Boulder 2. The files are still on your Mac* and you can work on them when offline. When back online, the changes will be synchronized with the copy stored in the cloud.

* If you enable Optimize Storage, then it is possible that older files will not be kept on your Mac. You can only access them from iCloud.com where you can re-download them to your Mac.

2. I use a Time Capsule and Time Machine to back up my hard drive. Am I no longer creating backups of the items in my Documents folder and my Desktop?

I have not tested a Time Machine backup on Desktop and Documents. I don't have enough iCloud storage space to enable the feature on a Mac that is being backed up with Time Machine. I will restore my Desktop and Documents folders on this Mac and enable Time Machine on it so that I can test what happens and report back when able. That probably won't be for at least a week as I think it will take that much time to figure out what does happen.

Barney - your "mirrored" description sounds spot on and fits with what Apple refers to as synchronization which occurs between the iCloud and local hard drive.

Good luck with your TM recovery testing. I suspect you'll find it simply works as before like I did. I'd even wager Apple designed the process to deal with a scenario where someone left an iCloud Document's file open by accident on another cloud based device such as an iPad or iPhone during a TM file recovery from their iMac.

regards,

Dave

Good luck with your TM recovery testing. I suspect you'll find it simply works as before like I did. I'd even wager Apple designed the process to deal with a scenario where someone left an iCloud Document's file open by accident on another cloud based device such as an iPad or iPhone during a TM file recovery from their iMac.

Thanks for that info. I was just going to reply to my own post indicating that you had already tested TM, but now that you point out the open file issue, I will focus a bit on that.

I was just being simplistic with my terminology - as far as the end-user is concerned they can't see them in the Home folder but can see them in the iCloud Drive folder – so visually it has moved.

Regarding Parallels, the Parallels Toolbox has an app that is called

Hide Desktop.app

I must have turned it on - after finding my customary desktop on OS X was gone.