Does Time Machine Backup My iCloud Drive?

In a roundabout way, yes.

The files in your iCloud drive folder are also mirrored locally. Time Machine backs up this local folder.

If you look at the contents of this folder, you will see it is a copy of your iCloud drive folder. This is the actual folder backed up by Time Machine.

Note that this Library folder is a hidden folder, so you need to hold the OPTION key down in Finder to see it.

If you currently have an iCloud Drive folder, you should have that local folder. Do you have iCloud Drive enabled in your iCloud system preferences?

There is a Library folder off the root of your HD. That's not the one Mobile Documents is in.

You need the one inside of your user folder. Where "newuser" would be your username.

I would strongly suggest you do not test with your life's work in any way.

Test with a single, expendable file of no importance.

Everything you posted is correct. The only way to save space on the hard drive is to turn optimization on, but then Time Machine won't be backing up full resolution photos. One option to consider is moving your Photos Library to an external hard drive. If you want that backed up in Time Machine, go to System Preferences/Time Machine/Options and make sure the drive isn't excluded.

Article is for iPhoto, but the basics are the same. After you move it, open Photos with the option/alt key held down, select the Library on the external, and click make system Library. It will now sync with iCloud. Once you are sure the photos are all there and the external is syncing with iCloud, you can delete the Library on the internal drive if desired.

iPhoto: Move your iPhoto library to a new location

I think I'm missing something here: when I go into my User Library, I see a folder called "Mobile Documents", but it appears with a folder icon (not the cloud icon), and plus it's far too small. It's only 130MB yet I've got plenty of gigabytes in iCloud Drive.

My main concern: my Documents folder is still on my Mac, so I'm not worried about that. But I've got other files that are now just in a folder in iCloud Drive, for syncing purposes, and I'm not sure if those are still being backed up by Time Machine.

If Optimization is turned on, if space is required on the Mac, then the documents from the Documents and Desktop folders will only be stored in iCloud on an as needed basis to make for more hard drive storage.

Hello there,

I have the same question. Did you get clarity? I want to begin using iCloud to store our photo's and free up space on the MacBook air since it is nearly full. I would still like time machine to be a full backup of my photo's, not just a smaller version. It seems that if I want to free up space I need to turn on photo optimization which will then mean that the MacBook air does not necessarily have the full original photo to store that time machine uses to back up.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm using Sierra and have 'Optimize' turned on. When I run a Time Machine backup, tons of files are continually downloaded from iCloud. I can tell because the little "loading" animation appears beside the iCloud folder, and when I click for more info, it says "1 file downloading." It does this for quite some time throughout my Time Machine backup. My presumption was that Sierra was downloading the documents in my Desktop and Documents folder, backing them up to Time Machine, and then removing them from my Mac again. Is this incorrect? And if that's not what is happening, then why the constant iCloud downloads while Time Machine is running?

Hey LACAllen, this was brilliant and helped me immensely, though I had to use Terminal to see my hidden files...nevertheless, you gave me hope. Now that I've found the documents I had lost (someone else deleted them by accident and I didn't realize until after the 30 days), if I click on one, Finder automatically shuts down and the folder closes. Any ideas what next?

I'd love to see an informed response to deepen's comment/question. This suggests the time capsule is actually backing up the original files (by downloading them--then removing them--through the hard drive so time capsule can access and back them up), based on what he's saying. This is super important as I too would like to use "optimization" (man it is handy for opening up space on my hard drive), but also don't fully trust my only backup being in the cloud. Anyone know the definitive answer on this?

Glad I stumbled upon this reply. I just want to make sure I understand you. I have everything in iCloud drive. I have plenty of storage available on my iMac. I have "Optimize Mac Storage" checked in Sys Preferences. Should I uncheck that to have those files saved on Time Machine?

Ultimately, I'd like to put files directly in iCloud Drive & also have them stored on my iMac. This is my second iMac. You'd think I'd have this figured out by now...

I'd appreciate your help in clearing this up for me. Thanks!

Time machine backs up all content in the icloud drive folder on your mac, which itself is a mirror of a hidden folder in your library.

If you have optimized youuo. Icloud drive and some content is on icloud only, it will not not be in your time machine backup, as it does not exist on the local HD that time machine backs up.

The mechanism to choose what gets moved to icloud and off your local HD is not configurable.

People report a lot of things online.

No definitive answer, but it could be due to iCloud's syncing process. If Time Machine alters metadata when doing its work, that may trigger some checks and balances for iCloud syncing. I have never noticed it myself.

I doubt it's actually uploading/downloading.

That would be a fairly useless backup, just of a semi-random portion of our documents (just those currently stored on the "optimised" local copy).

It would be great for Apple to
a) time machine backup the full iCloud documents/desktop (it might need to download the first time).

b) use the time machine to get a big file instead of re-downloading from iCloud.

Think I'll go make a suggestion...