How To Make Most of iCloud Storage?

[kliq]

Hey guys,

I'm paying for 200GB a month for iCloud Storage, problem is I haven't had any luck trying to figure out how to make the most of my storage, currently I've managed to only use about about 25GB in the almost year that I've had it, I'm syncing all the typical stuff (photos, documents, backups).

So my question is, how can I utilize the remaining data? I have an SSD Macbook Pro with 256GB, and as I quickly learned, iCloud makes local copies of files, so I don't want to be in a situation where my iCloud is almost filled up but as a result so is my Macbook.

Are there ways to store data on iCloud without it taking up room on your local machine? Does this serve as a workaround : http://macs.about.com/od/CloudServices/qt/Using-Icloud-For-Data-Storage.htm ?

If not, love to hear about how you guys are making the most of your iCloud storage, thanks!

 

[hojx]

Well iCloud Drive works somewhat like your typical Dropbox/Google Drive/etc. 's desktop apps. A local copy of a file is synchronised against a remote copy in the cloud.

What you can do to store files in the cloud without having a local copy is simple—switch off iCloud Drive under System Preferences -> iCloud.
You can still access files in iCloud.com, but of course using it won't be as seamless as it will no longer be integrated in your Mac.

This applies to every other file hosting service—without activating the desktop client everything can only be accessed from the web.