So I just bought my wife a new MBA 2020 with just 256GB of storage. We are replacing a similarly-spec'd older MBA which also is just 256GB. She was getting close to running out of storage, so I shelled out for the 2TB iCloud plan ($10/month), hturned on "Optimize Mac Storage" within her Photos app, and a large chunk of storage became available again.
But she still was using up quite a bit of storage space for Documents. We haven't (yet) turned on automatic iCloud storage for Documents, as I wanted us to go through her Documents folder to delete a lot of crap that may be out there that was no longer needed. But from what I've read so far about how automatic Documents storage works with iCloud, it sounds like it works more like an automatic backup of local SSD storage and, unlike Photos w/"Optimize Mac Storage" enabled, won't really free up any local storage. At least not with the default behavior, and it sounds like Apple doesn't really give you much (if anything) to configure around that.
A couple of questions:
1) Is there a way to create directories inside of iCloud that *don't* automatically sync back down to our devices (e.g., in this case, her MBA)? So, for example, if I've got Finder open and I select "iCloud Drive" and I create a new folder there, can I drag some local files over to that and then delete them locally? If I later want to open them on the MacBook, do I just double-click them from there, or would I want to drag/copy them back over to some other local directory (possibly one outside of the "Documents" folder so as to prevent it from being auto-synced back up to the iCloud Documents folder)?
2) If what I'm trying to do isn't possible/easy, would I be better off trying to make use of another company's cloud service for that (e.g., Microsoft, Google, DropBox)? We have the annual family plan for Microsoft Office which gives us each a good chunk of cloud storage, so maybe that would be better? I'm thinking that Apple's iCloud would probably be best/easiest to work with for anything we may want to access from one of our iPads or iPhones, but maybe I'm wrong in that assumption?
3) Somewhat relatedly, I could see us having a few files where we're ultra-concerned about security/privacy, and may not be comfortable having them stored in the cloud at all. For those, I'm assuming that I can simply create a folder outside of OSX's "Documents" directory to prevent the iCloud/Documents functionality from "finding them" and syncing them up to the cloud, right?
4) My wife also does some occasional video editing with iMovie. She records something with her iPhone, then copies it over to the laptop (I don't remember if she's using AirDrop or some other approach to moving the files over). My plan is to get an external SSD drive specifically for video editing purposes. From what I've read, it sounds like we can create a folder in iMovie that points to a folder on an external SSD drive so that we can work on editing movies entirely "within" the external SSD drive, so that we don't have to temporarily fill up our MacBook SSD with those files (and worry about iCloud finding them and trying to automatically back them up to iCloud). Anything I'm missing?
I'm sure that some of you pro users have already gotten up-to-speed on how best to do some of these things with iCloud, so I appreciate any help you can provide.
But she still was using up quite a bit of storage space for Documents. We haven't (yet) turned on automatic iCloud storage for Documents, as I wanted us to go through her Documents folder to delete a lot of crap that may be out there that was no longer needed. But from what I've read so far about how automatic Documents storage works with iCloud, it sounds like it works more like an automatic backup of local SSD storage and, unlike Photos w/"Optimize Mac Storage" enabled, won't really free up any local storage. At least not with the default behavior, and it sounds like Apple doesn't really give you much (if anything) to configure around that.
A couple of questions:
1) Is there a way to create directories inside of iCloud that *don't* automatically sync back down to our devices (e.g., in this case, her MBA)? So, for example, if I've got Finder open and I select "iCloud Drive" and I create a new folder there, can I drag some local files over to that and then delete them locally? If I later want to open them on the MacBook, do I just double-click them from there, or would I want to drag/copy them back over to some other local directory (possibly one outside of the "Documents" folder so as to prevent it from being auto-synced back up to the iCloud Documents folder)?
2) If what I'm trying to do isn't possible/easy, would I be better off trying to make use of another company's cloud service for that (e.g., Microsoft, Google, DropBox)? We have the annual family plan for Microsoft Office which gives us each a good chunk of cloud storage, so maybe that would be better? I'm thinking that Apple's iCloud would probably be best/easiest to work with for anything we may want to access from one of our iPads or iPhones, but maybe I'm wrong in that assumption?
3) Somewhat relatedly, I could see us having a few files where we're ultra-concerned about security/privacy, and may not be comfortable having them stored in the cloud at all. For those, I'm assuming that I can simply create a folder outside of OSX's "Documents" directory to prevent the iCloud/Documents functionality from "finding them" and syncing them up to the cloud, right?
4) My wife also does some occasional video editing with iMovie. She records something with her iPhone, then copies it over to the laptop (I don't remember if she's using AirDrop or some other approach to moving the files over). My plan is to get an external SSD drive specifically for video editing purposes. From what I've read, it sounds like we can create a folder in iMovie that points to a folder on an external SSD drive so that we can work on editing movies entirely "within" the external SSD drive, so that we don't have to temporarily fill up our MacBook SSD with those files (and worry about iCloud finding them and trying to automatically back them up to iCloud). Anything I'm missing?
I'm sure that some of you pro users have already gotten up-to-speed on how best to do some of these things with iCloud, so I appreciate any help you can provide.