iCloud Confused about iCloud

[Rich74]

Hello everyone.

I’ve uploaded to iCloud a few spreadsheets, a few PDFs and a random video - nothing too wild - yet.

On my iPad now there is a little cloud icon on all of these which is fine. I get that if I click on something, it’s going to download it from the cloud onto my iPad. Why? Surely that defeats the purpose of storing it in iCloud?

I have 490 odd gig of free storage on my iPad and I’m led to believe that iCloud is ‘intelligent’ enough that when it starts to run out of space it will automatically start to move things back to cloud. Why? If I wanted all these items downloaded onto my iPad surely I wouldn’t put them in the cloud in the first place. And how far does the intelligence go? I’ll end up with 480 gig with of stuff downloaded before it decides that it’s low on storage and will move stuff back to the cloud?

What am I doing wrong? If it’s in the cloud, why does it need to download another copy and stay on my iPad? Effectively two versions of each file?

If I have the wrong end of the stick fine, treat me like the fool I am, but I’ve been through all the Apple guides on this and cannot work out why it does this, why there’s not an option to put it back into the cloud after I’m done using it.

Thank you.

 

[Lihp8270]

It will just be caching it. Once it’s no longer needed and the space is required it will be removed.

This kind of thing is fairly necessary in one way or another. If you’re working on a file and have it “open” via the internet. What behaviour do you expect to happen if you lose connection?

What actually happens is that the file is downloaded, opened, uploaded, then removed when you’re done.

The whole internet works like this.

 

[Rich74]

Thanks. One thought though ‘Once it’s no longer needed and the space is required it will be removed’ who or what dictates this? When my iPad is full of unnecessary files or after 48 hours / a week / a month for example.

As for the whole internet works like this - I’m viewing this forum now, it hasn’t downloaded it onto my iPad. I click on my homepage and close the app, it’s gone. Are you saying my file has gone to because space taken up on my iPad tells me otherwise.

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

 

[Lihp8270]

Thanks. One thought though ‘Once it’s no longer needed and the space is required it will be removed’ who or what dictates this? When my iPad is full of unnecessary files or after 48 hours / a week / a month for example.

As for the whole internet works like this - I’m viewing this forum now, it hasn’t downloaded it onto my iPad. I click on my homepage and close the app, it’s gone. Are you saying my file has gone to because space taken up on my iPad tells me otherwise.

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

The website does get downloaded to your iPad, along with the images etc. Then when you’re done the temporary files get cleaned out.

All this stuff is managed by the OS/Browser etc.

So long as you don’t save a copy explicitly onto your iPad then just ignore it and let the iPad handle itself. It will only cache with whatever space is available.

 

[NoBoMac]

When my iPad is full of unnecessary files or after 48 hours / a week / a month for example.

It's basically when full of unnecessary. I only have a handful of files in iCloud, and plenty of space on my phone. Hence, all those files are local on my device, and some of them are going back over a year.

When space is required, the phone will remove the local copy of the oldest last-used file (eg. you have not accessed it a while). This is how similar products work. For example, your company's email servers might move the emails you have not looked at in a while to maybe tape storage or slower servers, as data has a life-cycle. Heavily accessed/used early on, after a couple weeks/months, gathering virtual dust.

 

[Rich74]

Thanks both, much appreciated.

 

[Eric Idle]

I have no idea how iCloud works. Apple can't explain it at all to anyone.