Documents & Documents

[Davidharry]

Good day to all.
could someone please explain the difference between the Documents folder and the documents with the little house.
what to keep in the folder with the little house and,what to keep in the other documents folder. Been thinking a lot about it.
On mackbook air.
thanks
David.

 

[Madhatter32]

The house represents your home folder. It should contain your documents folder among many other things.

 

[Davidharry]

Thanks. What’s the other documents folder for?

 

[DeltaMac]

The folder with the little house icon is your home folder.
Your home folder is the name of the user account that you are logged into.

If you open that folder with the house icon... What exactly is inside that folder? Do you see folders that SHOULD be there, such as Pictures, or Music, or Downloads, or Desktop (among others). And one of those will be Documents.
All of those will be naturally inside your home folder.

If you go to your System Preferences, then the Users & Groups pref pane, look at the list of your users.
Are any of those named "Documents"?

You can store documents anywhere you like, but your system provides a (home folder)/Documents folder, which, of course, you don't have to use for anything. You can choose to ignore it, and never use that folder. It's a just a convenience for you.

 

[Davidharry]

Many thanks both for the info. At last I understand the both documents folders. The one with the little house is connected to the icloud. And not the other.
ive had this MacBook for some time but didn’t quite understand the reason for two documents folders.
at last.
many thanks
David. 🤔

 

[sgtaylor5]

Many thanks both for the info. At last I understand the both documents folders. The one with the little house is connected to the icloud. And not the other.
ive had this MacBook for some time but didn’t quite understand the reason for two documents folders.
at last.
many thanks
David. 🤔

Not quite. The icon with the little house is your home folder: /Users/[username], where "/" is the root, the base, of the file system. Every user account [username] on your computer has a home folder in /Users. The home folder contains the Desktop, Documents, Music, Movies, Pictures, Public, Sites folders (if you turn Sites on). That structure exists before you turn on iCloud/Desktop and Documents sync. When you turn Desktop and Documents sync on, the Desktop and Documents folders in the home folder are replaced with hard links that point to new Desktop and Documents folders in /Users/[username]/Library/Mobile Documents. Then, and only then are they synced to iCloud Drive. They are still locally stored on your computer; they are simply in a different place in your home folder.

 

[Davidharry]

Thanks.
reading through the replies. Am I correct in thinking that all items in the home folder don’t link to the iCloud.
Only items in the documents folder with no name does link with iCloud.
Thanks once again. David. 👍

 

[Davidharry]

Many thanks. Got it.

 

[Gregg2]

I'm lost in your confusion. The name of the documents folder is Documents. A folder with no name is a " " folder (its name is inside the quote marks). It's not the documents folder unless its name is Documents. Now, a folder with any name whatsoever can be used to hold your documents. In fact, what most people do is create folders within the Documents folder with various names to help them organize files.

I have no idea what this folder with no name might be, as Apple does not ship Macs with such a folder. Therefore, it is a folder that someone created. What folder is this "no name" folder in? Are there things in the "no name" folder that you need? If so, the previous question is very important. If not, the "no name" folder can probably be deleted. Don't just delete it now. You need to identify what is in it and, if anything, what those items are for.

Doesn't your folder with the house icon have a name? I can't imagine that the macOS would allow it to be nameless.

 

[Davidharry]

Thank You

Doesn't your folder with the house icon have a name? I can't imagine that the macOS would allow it to be nameless.
Yes it has my name

 

[Madhatter32]

Maybe screenshot the two folders in order to get more guidance. The true "documents" folder has an icon that appears in it. Any other "documents" folder is just a regular folder. If you have two "documents" folder with the icons than that would be not normal.

 

[Davidharry]

Regarding the folder with my name and the little house.
What I would like to know is. Does the contents of that specific folder come into the iCloud?
Thanks.

 

[kschendel]

Regarding the folder with my name and the little house.
What I would like to know is. Does the contents of that specific folder come into the iCloud?

No, not unless you've specifically asked to share your home folder to iCloud Drive. By default I think only your Desktop and Documents folders sync to iCloud Drive.

The directory (aka folder) scheme in Mac OS, like most filesystems today, is hierarchical. There's a directory at the top and any directory can contain files or directories. Specifically, at the very top there's a directory called "/" also known as the root directory. That directory can contain files or more directories. So there's a directory /Users, and inside that there's a /Users/Yourname directory which is specifically yours; that's your "home" directory and the one that Finder shows with the little house. All files and folders (directories) that your user account owns are by convention placed inside of (underneath) the /Users/Yourname home directory.

Going deeper, you have /Users/Yourname/Desktop and /Users/Yourname/Documents directories for your desktop and documents respectively. (and other directories, such as /Users/Yourname/Music, /Users/Yourname/Downloads, etc.) When dealing with your files and folders, they are all going to have the /Users/Yourname prefix so Finder strips that off and shows you just Desktop, Documents, Music, Downloads, and so forth.

You can maybe get a better picture of what's going on if you click on your home folder icon in a Finder window, and then select View / as Columns from the menu.

 

[Davidharry]

Many thanks to all.
Yes I understand the situation now at last.Thaanks to all