How does iCloud Drive work in High Sierra?

[Shadow Puppets]

Hi there,

I'm wanting to set up my new Mac and iPhone to sync all my documents / photos etc across all devices... basically everything I do (so Photoshop files, videos and loads more).

My question is, on High Sierra, does iCloud Drive work in a similar way to Dropbox in which all my documents on my mac will be saved locally automatically, and a copy sync'd up to the cloud? i.e. if I have no internet connection on my mac, will I still be able to work on those files?

Thinking about putting my entire folder structure into the drive. Would that work?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Weaselboy]

As long as you have this Optimize Mac Storage turned OFF, everything in iCloud will be mirrored on your local drive and will be available with no Internet.

iCloud Drive is not intended to store your entire home folder like that, it is only for specific data type like your documents for example.

 

[GuilleA]

Hi there,

I'm wanting to set up my new Mac and iPhone to sync all my documents / photos etc across all devices... basically everything I do (so Photoshop files, videos and loads more).

My question is, on High Sierra, does iCloud Drive work in a similar way to Dropbox in which all my documents on my mac will be saved locally automatically, and a copy sync'd up to the cloud? i.e. if I have no internet connection on my mac, will I still be able to work on those files?

Thinking about putting my entire folder structure into the drive. Would that work?

Thanks in advance!

Yes. The exact location of iCloud Drive is ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~cloudDocs/. Like Weaselboy said, as long as you don't have Optimize Storage turned on, everything you put on your iCloud Drive will be uploaded and mirrored on all your Macs and available on your iDevices as well. You cannot select which folders to sync, as of now it's an all-or-nothing deal.

 

[jpn]

as both previous posters have advised, make sure you do not turn on Optimize Mac Storage (the check box as shown in the bottom of the screen shot Weaselboy posted).

here is the fine print however:
1 once you turn on iCloud Drive if you have chosen Documents and Desktop to be uploaded it will upload all your files in the Documents and Desktop that are on your mac to the cloud.
2 dont worry about the Desktop and Documents folders on your mac actually disappearing. they now appear under the iCloud Drive icon.
3 if you ever decide to go back to not having your files on iCloud Drive, and turn off the service, its not a problem, except that your files then remain on apple's server for a (rather long but limited) amount of time only. and the thing is, at that time the files are not on your computer, they exist only in the cloud and you need to manually transfer them back to your computer at that time.

just make sure you have purchased enough storage in iCloud ahead of time. and be clear about what counts towards storage and what doesn't.

there really is nothing else to be concerned about. it works really well, without pain.
just remember it is a syncing service to be able to access your files across all your devices.
it is not a backup service in any way.
it works well within the apple iOS-macOS ecosystem. there are many threads about it not working well with other cloud-like drives such as google and others.

 

[fischersd]

One correction on the all-or-nothing comment. If you have folders you don't want to sync within other folders that are being synced, you just rename that folder to have .nosync at the end (example "Vuze downloads" would be "Vuze downloads.nosync" )

You'll then see a cloud symbol with a slash through it next to that folder in finder - confirming it isn't being synced with iCloud.

 

[MacGizmo]

I keep everything on iCloud Drive. There is nothing in my Documents folder, Downloads, Desktop, etc... It's all stored in iCloud for easy access on my MBP and iPhone. I work directly from that folder with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, MS Office, Apple iWork, etc.

I've not had any problems in the 3 years I've been doing this. Obviously I have local backups and TimeMachine backups as well—I'm not stupid, I don't trust ANY company 100% with my data.

 

[kagharaht]

Can we save our iMovie Library in iCloud drive so that I don't have to copy it back and forth between my iMac and MacBook?