If you take a look under the hood of iCloud Drive, you can easily see that the Finder does not only lie about file sizes - well, at least it displays interpretable data. You only learn the truth with alternative tools.
From the screenshot (Ventura V13), you can clearly see what Finder, Terminal or an alternative file browser (OmniDiskSweeper in this case) knows or has to tell about an iCloud file.
The different treatment of file sizes is pretty obvious. Up to and including V13 Ventura, the iCloud eviction of a file "some.thing" -as shown- was signaled to Finder by replacing it with a hidden file ".some.thing.icloud".
In a recent blog article, H.Oakley describes how the behavior has changed with V14 Sonoma. There is no longer the hidden file as shown, Sonoma records the iCloud eviction directly in the original file.
This is probably also the reason why everything is reloaded from iCloud right after the upgrade.
Apple calls the new behaviour "dataless files" and I'm curious how tools like Terminal or OmniDiskSweeper will handle them in the future.
I assume there will be plenty of hiccups. Various scripts or backup procedures come to mind.
Some more details can be found in Oakley's blog:
From the screenshot (Ventura V13), you can clearly see what Finder, Terminal or an alternative file browser (OmniDiskSweeper in this case) knows or has to tell about an iCloud file.
The different treatment of file sizes is pretty obvious. Up to and including V13 Ventura, the iCloud eviction of a file "some.thing" -as shown- was signaled to Finder by replacing it with a hidden file ".some.thing.icloud".
In a recent blog article, H.Oakley describes how the behavior has changed with V14 Sonoma. There is no longer the hidden file as shown, Sonoma records the iCloud eviction directly in the original file.
This is probably also the reason why everything is reloaded from iCloud right after the upgrade.
Apple calls the new behaviour "dataless files" and I'm curious how tools like Terminal or OmniDiskSweeper will handle them in the future.
I assume there will be plenty of hiccups. Various scripts or backup procedures come to mind.
Some more details can be found in Oakley's blog:
Last edited:
