Documents Renamed "Documents - Local" After Turning Off iCloud Sync

I just recently bought a second MacBook Pro. On the first I had Documents and Desktop syncing with iCloud. After setting up the second and turning the feature on, I got a message saying (I'm paraphrasing from memory, didn't screenshot it) that since another computer with the same name ("Clay's MacBook Pro") already existed, it would create a second, nested Documents folder for me inside of iCloud Drive > Documents. That was annoying so I figured I'd turn syncing off on the second computer and change settings then turn it on again later.


After I turned it off, I noticed that my Documents folder was being displayed as "Documents — Local" in Finder in the title bar. Though upon further inspection through Terminal, it was still called just "Documents" in the file system. I ran `ls -la` in Terminal and found a ".localized" file and since it had nothing in it, I deleted it. That didn't change anything.


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MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on Sep 4, 2017 9:06 PM

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2 replies

Sep 5, 2017 10:49 AM in response to clayellis

Hallo clay, nothing to worry about here — this is quite normal Finder behaviour when you´re signed in to iCloud (as far as I know!) and my Finder windows also show Documents-Local and Desktop-Local when I select them. Like you I have iCloud Drive showing in the Finder sidebar — for example, select something there and "iCloud" will be displayed at the top of the window. It´s just a way of showing you that you´re in "Local" or "iCloud", to avoid mistakes/confusion. FWIW, I think "Local" will disappear if you sign out of iCloud, but I haven´t tried this. Otherwise I´d just ignore it! Hope this might put your mind at rest! Cheers, Ian.

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Documents Renamed "Documents - Local" After Turning Off iCloud Sync

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