desktop and documents iCloud Drive

Question

desktop and documents iCloud Drive

hello gurus, due to some problem with iCloud (error message was 'can't find helper application' or some such thing), based on web search, I signed off iCloud in System Preferences. Now, I'm uncertain as to what is going on with iCloud

in home folder it shows documents folder all items seem to be on my Mac. however it is 'Documents ' i.e. space at the end and if I try to change it back to 'Documents' (no space) get error message.

in iCloud it shows all with the the little download icon on the right AND it seems to be downloading as well.

In Library/Mobile documents, doesn't seem to have anything.

In About this Mac shows 'enable desktop and documents folder' etc.

In System Preferences, after I click 'done' and 'reopen' the check box again gets unchecked.

Questions: are my documents safely stored somewhere?

can I delete the 'documents ' folder in my hD w/o losing anything?

what should I do with the status in About this Mac window and the mobile documents folder?

In System Preferences, it keeps getting deselected; what to do about that?

Some screenshots

Posted on Nov 17, 2018 9:52 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 19, 2018 9:41 AM in response to tygb

Thanks, I followed the steps mentioned. however the desktop and documents check in System Preferences is still NOT getting checked while everything in iCloud System Preferences is checked. in addition my local hard drive available space has fallen to just 38 GB. There is an iCloud archive folder as well (5GB almost) that is in my home folder. Library>mobile documents still shows folder icon rather than the contents. On the other hand, About this Mac>Storage>manage shows 98 GB available on the local hard drive (which was the value earlier before this whole problem with iCloud drive). And as can be seen, it shows 92 GB in iCloud Drive but also shows enable iCloud desktop and documents on the right pane. In finder, under iCloud section it shows the various folders which per my understanding would show only if iCloud desktop and documents was enabled.

Now I'm not sure if iCloud desktop and document is enabled or not and how to get back the hard drive space (which is also contradictory as seen in my info vs. about this Mac)

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Answer 2

Dec 1, 2018 10:37 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney and tygb. I retried and then called up apple support at india but that wasn't very helpful since she came up with the suggestion to 'erase and install' or some such inane option. I don't want to spend hours installing all over again and putting back things from backup etc.

Anyway, so here are the steps I followed after the above call and thankfully, it seems to be working OK (as of writing this from yesterday)

1. signed off icloud

2. when the window appears to 'keep the following on your local drive', de-selected all of them and hit the continue button

3. didn't touch the system preference UNTIL it did it's thing--spinning gear and what not until it finally showed the window to 'login to icloud' with my Apple ID entered in.

4. Quit System Preferences

5. restart Macbook Pro and hold down ⌘R to go to recovery mode

6. in recovery mode, ran DU>Macintosh HD> First Aid

7. Quit DU, then back in main screen (macOS utilities, I think), click 'reinstall macOS'

8. This does NOT erase anything but only reinstall the OS on top, so hopefully adds/replaces any files that were corrupted or missing?

9. quit recovery mode, and restart normally

10. sign in to iCloud AND WAIT at least several minutes BEFORE clicking or doing any other action (in case where it seems like nothing is going on)

11. Working fine as of now!!

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Answer 3

tygb

Level 9

64,588 points

Dec 1, 2018 10:26 PM in response to liquidmetalin

The method what I suggested worked for me as it was applied many times in my Mac some times sign out from secondary authentication and then again plan to sign in with 2FA and then again to secondary authentication id .

in your screen shots what are these solver.app and Mac journal.app also in your last screen shot in front of system the small circle is rotating it means the processes that are connected with icloud server are still syncing and will take time .

You can check the box of the desktop and documents after some gap say ten minutes , and what other softwares , unknown application do you use in your Mac , some antivirus ? in the finder - the applications will be visible more refined way to view them and uninstall them is use https://etrecheck.com/

And if you trust post back the results .

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,830 points

Dec 1, 2018 10:26 PM in response to liquidmetalin

There is a lot of illusory magic going on with Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive. Not much actually is ever truly moved.

When you set up Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive, nothing actually gets moved. The Finder hides your real Desktop and Documents folders and displays its contents in the iCloud Drive folders. Nothing is actually placed in Mobile Documents like you see when you use other iCloud Drive locations. Since your folders still exist, you cannot make new ones with the same name in your Home folder.

If you subsequently disable Desktop & Documents in iCloud Drive, a hard link to your original documents is made inside Mobile Documents and your real Desktop and Documents folders are unhidden and empty. A hard link is just a file system reference. The actual storage space for the file is not changed. As far as anything can tell, it doesn't matter which reference you look at, they all point to the same disk storage space. When you delete a hard linked file, the reference is removed and the storage space is only deallocated when the reference count goes to 0.

If you then want to move your files off of iCloud Drive and back into your empty Desktop and Documents folders, the "move" is actually just creating a hard link from Mobile Documents into your Desktop and Documents folders, so it is almost instantaneous.

When you sign out of iCloud, the references to the files still exist, so you still will see all the files and have the ability to download from iCloud, though you'll have to log into iCloud. I don't know how that would affect current uploads and downloads to iCloud Drive. Signing out of iCloud doesn't alter what you have stored there.

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