How to stop icloud download (sync) on Mac OS Sierra

So I have just figured out how to stop something downloading from iCloud. If your on a Mac when items are downloading there is the little circle next to iCloud Drive on the left menu bar. If you click this it opens another box up where you can stop files from downloading. Worked for me just stoped 26gb oh unnecessary files.

Two ways to pause/stop the cloud sync:

- buy Little Snitch and create a rule to stop this traffic

- make a little script to stop the services (from bash):

#!/bin/sh

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlsessiond.plist

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nsurlstoraged.plist

When you run these commands, you're asked for your user password (sudo commands require it) and cloud sync will stop till next reboot.

About huge amount of space on disk, I'm still searching a solution.

About the fact Apple considers everyone on the planet has a 1Gb/s line at home, I'm still searching a reason. 😉

Right so for those who are desperate for a temporary solution till Apple implements a selective sync feature, go to GitHub - Obbut/iCloud-Control: User-controlled selective sync for iCloud Drive and download iCloud Control.

When you notice your Mac is downloading (nsurlsessiond/bird are running) cmd+a the files you DON'T want to be downloaded and click "Remove Selected Item locally"

Apple if you're reading this, hire this guy (or me) to implement this and you've got a fair chance at Dropbox

I solved it by going to System Preferences -> iCloud -> Sign Out.

So I just signed out of my icloud and then it asks you if you want to close the other things downlaoding, and so on.

Some feedback - I spoke with Apple Support in detail and they we're not able to help - it got bumped up to their senior engineers and I'm waiting on feedback from them. The only suggestion support had was to let it finish downloading and perhaps that would solve it. However I was advised of two important things: that letting the download finish could crash my laptop if it exceeded the allowable storage; and not to uncheck iCloud and delete the files when it finishes downloading otherwise the files would be deleted from ALL my devices including their original location on my office computer 😕

SO - what did just work for me though was downloading that link that someone else posted previously in this thread from GitHub - it offers some feature onto Finder where you can stop the download. The link is here: https://github.com/Obbut/iCloud-Control

Hope it works for you guys too. I'll update when I hear from Apple's engineers. Wow - what a hassle.

I have exactly the same problem at work. icloud drive starts downloading 20GB from the cloud and the whole line is overwhelmed and no one in the office can work.

just like the icloud drive always "takes" all the free space on the disk and so I can not add more data to the disk does not work timemachine that needs some place to create a pre-ward, and I do not talk about the whole mac slowdown which has only 3GB 256GB HDD where the 150GB takes up the erasable iCloud drive that can not be deleted.

Disconnecting the Internet for a finder through a firewall does not work for me. the only thing to do is to restart the mac, shut down the boot over the intergrity protection terminal, and then, after the OSX is loaded, via another terminal command to shut down sync icloud completely (including photos).

it does not bother to turn off the integrity protections, I will refuse to log off completely and some applications will stop working.

apple should be ashamed of this. just add the settings as they have photos. either locally or all online, and manually set the folders to find the folders locally.

Asleep with the apple that you give up such a pasquiel that just annoys the life of the users.

I KNEW I should not have tried to use iCloud as a backup. I KNEW I should have set up Google Drive as the back up.

I decided to use iCloud to back up my MacBook data offsite just to keep my personal data in iCloud, and my work files in my work Google Drive. I knew it would take DAYS. What I didn't realize was Apple Engineers are so stupid, they didn't put a PAUSE button on the data uploads.

THEN, I accidently hit the cloud button while I was trying to figure out IF there was some way I could stop the upload so I could do something like...oh WORK AND MAKE MONEY.

Now, stupid iCloud is downloading 6.5 GB of data to my harddrive. And it is only a duplicate of what I already have on my hard drive, since anything uploaded comes from my MacBook. And I have no idea right now to where it is being downloaded. Now, I will have to take time out to run a deduplication on all of my files. I'm beyond angry right now.

And the network connection is **** right now for both downloading and uploading anything. I can barely read the news. This makes it really hard to get paid work done.

And of course, as noted above, the "x" that SHOULD STOP THE DOWNLOAD or UPLOAD doesn't work.

Brilliant, Apple, brilliant. 👏-1F3FC;👏-1F3FC;👏-1F3FC;

Some of us have to work. We don't get to sit around all day transferring files up and down. I cannot believe in 2017 that a company built a cloud networked data system that doesn't let you pause transfers, much less stop them.

Apple, you go be you. 👏-1F3FC;👏-1F3FC;👏-1F3FC;

I may never buy your products again, I am so angry and upset over this stupidity. You are wasting my time. And it is a waste of time to post this, but I want SOMEONE at Apple to see this problem and FIX IT.

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem or a suggestion for change. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem/suggested change solved sooner.

Click here to send Feedback

Optimize mac storage: I suspect the key part in “the full contents of icloud drive will be stored on this mac if you have enough space” is “if you have enough space”. If you leave it unchecked, it will store everything, and if you check it, it’ll store whatever there’s enough space for.

I don’t see a good way to change this apart from using a Finder extension like iCloud Control. Even then, I tell it to remove local copies of everything, it does, but later still downloads some quietly. Right now iCloud is downloading 2539 who knows which files for I’m pretty sure no good reason.

The thing is, some of my devices do not have the same storage nor primary use as the others. I want to use the when I want to use it. Otherwise, I want all other materials to remain on iCloud until I want to download them. I don't want as much of the 2TB of content to be placed, as much as possible, on my MacBook Pro, just because I have it in iCloud from my Mac Pro. Redesign the "Forced-Sync" and allow "Available-Sync" options, perhaps as a piece of file metadata.

Seems like there is no way, which is totally dumb of macOS designers — you have stop button, but instead of stopping the operation, it just closes the window.

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I'm currently downloading 18GB of files which I don't need now, and which I started just by occasionally hitting cloud icon near the folder name. And I can't stop it. *****.

You mean the "Optimize Mac Storage" checkbox that unclearly indicates that if you check it, "the full contents of iCloud Drive will be stored on this Mac if you have enough space..." ?

I have the NOT CHECKED because I do NOT want this to happen. Still happens.

Frustratingly, 18GB of 67GB Downloading 26,725 items from iCloud (this is greatly more that last night, likely because I "checked" the "fill up my hard drive with stuff I do not need right now" button, cleverly disguised as "Optimize Mac Storage".

So I checked the box to see if the "explanation" will change with context - now I cannot uncheck it!

This is ridiculous - not as ridiculous as the fact that there has been no response here since my update mid-August.

This is so incredibly frustrating isn't it!! I accidentally double clicked a folder when trying to attach a PDF, and so now the folder wants to download completely from iCloud to my Mac to attach it to the email, even though I deleted the email attachment immediately.

No matter how many times I click the little "x", which you would think would stop the download, it does nothing. So incredibly frustrating when I am now downloading 10GB of files that I absolutely don't need, and there is NOTHING you can do to stop it.

This is one of the most annoying things about the mac and I can't believe they haven't fixed this issue yet. Just happened again to me just now, which is why I needed to share and also feel your pain.

Same think happened to me , and as soon as I find out how to sort this out,never again iCloud for me ,I’ll move all my files out ...Tipical Apple way of doing things ,unacceptable in this day and age.

Extremely annoying. - I have the same problem. Sometimes you double click on a folder to open it when trying to add an attachment in mail and it adds the whole folder (when its a folder in Icloud) consequently, when you undo it starts to download the whole folder (right now my computer is downloading 28gb which is slowing down my whole internet and computer (and filling my laptop hard drive) - very irritating.