Where are Desktop and Documents stored on iMac after iCloud upload

Here's a linked overview of iCloud Desktop and Document storage (Note the turnoff Desktop and Document's storage instructions at the bottom of the page and be aware! - make sure all of your documents have completed their initial upload before you turn *off* iCloud storage or you will likely lose data if you deactivate iCloud Desktop and Document storage. Make sure you have a current Time Machine backup just in case something goes wrong.)

Add your Desktop and Documents files to iCloud Drive - Apple Support

The locally stored copy of iCloud Desktop and Documents on your Mac is:

~/Library/Mobile Documents

Try doing a spotlight search (command & space bar) for one of the documents or folders that you know is both on your HD as well as uploaded to i-Cloud. I haven't loaded much to i-Cloud but Spotlight does show duplicates on both my HD and in my i-Cloud account.

Hi Pokey,

It's deceiving but that path is to folders stored on your hard drive - not the cloud. You can easily verify this by turning off your network connection then going to the same target folder using that path and you'll find all of your documents intact with no connection whatsoever to the World Wide Web functioning. Give it a try...

regards,

Dave

I think the confusion lies with many of us misunderstanding what the feature called "iCloud Desktop and Document storage" actually is.

It doesn't move your documents to iCloud, rather it synchronizes a copy to iCloud that can be accessed by all of your Apple devices when online or after a device reconnects to the internet and iCloud synchronization updates that device with the most current form of the document if changes have been made.

peakachu wrote:

....

Also, does each Apple device have 5GB of iCloud storage? So three devices means 15GB of storage?

It is your Apple ID that has 5GB of free storage, not the device.

Hi Black dog, the file path you posted (~/Library/Mobile Documents) takes me to the i-Cloud drive, not actual documents on my HD(?).

Right you are ! Thanks for the education on how i-Cloud works. Turns out I was one of the many that didn't totally understand exactly what's going on when i-Cloud does it's magic.

Glad that helped!