Level 1

83 points

Documents and Desktop folders not appearing on my Mac

When I opened up my Mac today my Documents and Desktop folders were missing. In iCloud in Settings iCloud Drive is checked and Options show Desktop & Documents Folders checked. As I have sufficient storage on my Mac I've not optimized my storage there. If I go to iCloud.com all my documents and desktop files are there OK.

I thought I could correct this by restoring files from my Time Machine backup so I tried restoring all my desktop files. That was OK at first but then it started uploading these to iCloud and they disappeared again from my Mac! It seems that somehow or other my iCloud settings are not held properly but how do I correct this?

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12.3), MacBook Pro, iPad Air 2, iPhone 7 +

Posted on Mar 20, 2017 11:10 AM

Top-ranking reply

Zardock

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Feb 26, 2018 8:35 AM

System Preferences --> iCloud --> Make sure iCloud Drive is checked and click Options... --> Desktop & Documents Folders should be unchecked. Check it. Wait about a minute. Uncheck it again. As soon as you do that, your iCloud drive folder on your Mac should begin to populate with all of your folders. Bear in mind that unless you've checked Optimize Mac Storage in the Options window, the entire contents of whatever you have in the iCloud will be copied to your Mac's HD.

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47 replies

donellis

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2017 6:35 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you one last time – you've been very patient and very helpful.

Nov 19, 2017 4:51 AM in response to RobbieSnr

Please instruct me on how to recover my files and folders to my Mac

Dan490

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2017 10:51 AM in response to Kavanavak

Super helpful. I was resigned to the notion that I had lost all my data. It is currently returning. Thank You!!!!!

Dan490

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2017 10:52 AM in response to RobbieSnr

The reply post from Kavanek resolved a similar problem I had.

Jan 5, 2018 6:10 PM in response to RobbieSnr

For me its still not working... please help

Desktop Issue - YouTube

sham1995

Level 1

4 points

Jan 20, 2018 6:12 PM in response to alexandervfl

I have the same issue after installing the new update! Does anyone have any solutions to the video posted above?

R. Ranch

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2018 2:53 PM in response to LocalUser

This response, your response, was listed on the top as "helpful" response.

There is no "helpful" information other than an explanation of being displeased with how Apple operates.

RobbieSnr Author

Level 1

83 points

Mar 20, 2017 3:59 PM in response to leroydouglas

Both Desktop and Documents appear in the sidebar under iCloud Drive but if I click on either nothing shows up. After I restored the Desktop I could see all the entries but then they started to disappear.

Eric Root

Level 10

685,221 points

Mar 21, 2017 9:31 AM in response to RobbieSnr

Might be a corrupt .plist.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit the application.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.

Restart the computer, open the application, and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the application is the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

Then try resetting iCloud Drive/Options.

RobbieSnr Author

Level 1

83 points

Mar 21, 2017 10:46 AM in response to Barney-15E

I'm quite happy for the Documents and Desktop folders to appear under iCloud Drive, they've been there for some time now and I'm not concerned about them not appearing in the Home Folder. My problem is that these folders are both empty although all the contents are showing in iCloud.com. Before this happened these folders correctly showed their contents on my Mac.

I'm going to try Eric Root's suggestion that my problem may be due to a corrupt .plist file.

RobbieSnr Author

Level 1

83 points

Mar 22, 2017 10:05 AM in response to Eric Root

The problem is that System Preferences are showing what the situation should be, i.e. the Desktop and Documents folders are synced to iCloud and Mac storage is not optimized. In that situation all the files in both these folders should appear on my Mac in the Desktop and Documents folders of iCloud Drive. If I click on iCloud Drive in the sidebar I do see folders for both Desktop and Documents but they're completely empty!

What I'm going to do in System Preferences/iCloud/iCloud Drive/Options is to uncheck the syncing of these two Desktop and Documents folders. According to the info about iCloud Drive this should clear out these folders on my Mac, which are already empty, leaving all the files in iCloud.com. I'll then go to iCloud.com and manually download all these files back to my Mac. Having done that I'll go back and check the syncing of these folders. I'll hope that this will sort out my problem, and leave all the files on my Mac!

RobbieSnr Author

Level 1

83 points

Apr 7, 2017 9:02 AM in response to RobbieSnr

RobbieSnr wrote:

Well yesterday I reset my iCloud Drive options so that Desktop & Documents were not syncing with the Drive and started to download all the Desktop files that were stored in iCloud.com. I found that I could only select for download just the files there, and not the folders, and that these files were all downloaded individually into the default Safari download folder. The wasn't too bad as I could change that default folder to be the Desktop. However the major problem was the folders I had on the Desktop. Each folder had to be opened in turn and the files then selected for download, and I had to keep changing the default download folder so that the files were downloaded into the correct subfolders. I agree that I have too much on my Desktop!

The above wasn't too bad but I hate to think how much work there would be in downloading all the Document files from iCloud.com where there are subfolders going down many levels. It's quite ridiculous that when anyone wants to stop syncing the Desktop & Documents to the iCloud Drive that Apple don't provide for some easy means of downloading the whole of the files to the Mac from where they were uploaded in the first instance. Others have commented on this.
To deal with restoring Documents to my Mac I'm going to have to resort to restoring these from my last Time Machine backup before this problem happened - fortunately since then I've not altered any of the Document files.

I have since found that an option appears at one point when removing the syncing of Desktop & Documents to keep copies in the Mac of all the files that were in iCloud.com. These copies appear in a folder named iCloud Drive (Archive) in the home folder. These are actual copies of the files and not hard links, and can be moved over into Desktop and Document folders in the home directory. It is not therefore necessary to download these files directly from iCloud.com as i suggested above or retrieve them from a Time Machine backup. There is a mention in one of the iCloud Drive notes that says copies are kept on the Mac but it doesn't state where these are held.

Having read the excellent article by David Gewurtz about using Dropbox to sync Mac files I'm considering following this route in future to sync at least my Desktop and Documents so they are available in both my Mac and MacBook.

I want to have hard copies of my files on my hard disk rather than links so these are stored in my Time Machine backups, to allow a file to be retrieved at a later date should it have been deleted from the synced source. I've not been able to work out whether this would be possible if i used the Dropbox route. For the meantime therefore I'm carrying on using iCloud Drive to sync my files.

donellis

Level 1

4 points

Oct 24, 2017 6:41 PM in response to Barney-15E

That's reassuring – and something I had hoped for, since I didn't see my available disk space change.

So now my question is: How to I get everything back to the way things appeared before I turned on iCloud?

You asked "Are the files in iCloud Drive Desktop and Documents folders?" I don't even know where to find those, so I don't know.

Thanks for your advice – now and for a couple more replies, I hope. 🙂

Added:

Is that the "iCloud Drive" I see in Finder? If so, I believe some of them are there. About an hour ago, in a fit of desperation, I turned on iCloud Drive for Desktop and Documents and I'm letting it run. I figured it wouldn't hurt anything.

Thanks again.

donellis

Level 1

4 points

Oct 24, 2017 6:55 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks again, Barney. My breathing is returning to normal. Now that I know that nothing has been deleted or lost, I think I'll let the iCloud backup continue until it's complete. And then I'll decide if I want to leave it all in iCloud (now that I understand it), or move everything back to Documents and Desktop locally, after turning off iCloud.

I take it that you can't have your Documents and Desktop in both places and just have them sync – is that correct? My thought that this was how it works is what led me into this problem in the first place.

If I want them in both places, perhaps I should just use Dropbox.

You've been great! Much obliged.

Don

donellis

Level 1

4 points

Oct 24, 2017 7:07 PM in response to Barney-15E

Yes, I see your point – I guess if I leave them in iCloud, I would just have to get used to going to a different local folder. So this means that if I'm ever without an internet connection I can still call up any file in Documents and work on it and save it? (I could test that, of course, but I'm in the middle of a project that needs wifi, sorry.)

Cheers,

Don

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Documents and Desktop folders not appearing on my Mac