iCloud 'Keep Downloaded' Option Included in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia

[Chungry]

I’m surprised this wasn’t touted as a feature in the bento box slide. Glasses of ice water for people in hell indeed. Even garbo cloud services like Dropbox and onedrive had this.

 

[InTeCredo]

I hope Apple would extend the same courtesy to the Books for iOS and iPadOS, too, especially the ones with smaller storage capacities. I got so tired of my e-books being "deleted" from iPad due to the storage constraint (thanks to the irritating System Data), and I had to download them so often. Too often, I had been in the situations when I wanted to read the e-books but no Internet access. Reading the articles and forums, it is apparent that I am not only one: many people, namely the disaster responders and engineers who rely on iPad Books app for consulting the manuals and such get frustrated when they are at the sites with no cellular service or Internet access.

I wish I could have the option to prevent some e-books from being deleted in iPad.

 

[vaxes]

I would love there to be a deleted downloaded after a week of not using a file option.
My little mac mini only has 256gb and iCloud downloads suck up all the storage and it's a pain having to go through and remove downloads.

-AE

 

[LFO8]

How about the opposite? Preventing specific folders or files from ever downloading to your device? Currently iCloud keeps my local storage permanently full.

Amen!

 

[someshwaradas]

Finally!

 

[Njiphoner]

Very happy to see this feature returning. It was removed in Sonoma for some reason, glad it's back.

Yes this statement from the article wasn't exactly accurate:

Apple offered no straightforward way to prevent this – until now.

It used to be an option and then was removed and made the user experience subpar. I'll be glad to have it back as well!

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

So so so glad they've added this.

iCloud Drive needs so much more work. It's so limited and does some really stupid things sometimes. Wish there was the ability to sync downloads between devices - really the option to sync more places as well.

This. I try it from time to time but keep going back to Google drive.

I do the same with Safari, maps, and pod cast app. I try them and go back to better options.

 

[eyez73]

Wish it just had the ability to specify what to sync and what not to sync, like every other sync product.

Then I'll probably jump aboard.

And then a docker container to allow iCloud sync to my Synology NAS

I would love to be able to sync to my Synology as well. I have an older iMac and one of its main jobs is to run a Chronosync job to the NAS 🤦🏻‍♂️

 

[Brien]

Fantastic! 🥳

At the risk of sounding greedy, can we have this in Photos now? 🤓

Can you not keep all Photos locally on macOS anymore?

 

[fatTribble]

Can you not keep all Photos locally on macOS anymore?

Sure, but you can’t enable Optimize Photos in Settings then pick Albums or Folders to keep downloaded. Same for iOS and iPadOS. My iPhone won’t hold all of my Photos library so it would be nice to choose an Album of a recent trip to keep downloaded for example

 

[1t1sm3]

This feature is 13 years late...

 

[MrGimper]

I would love to be able to sync to my Synology as well. I have an older iMac and one of its main jobs is to run a Chronosync job to the NAS 🤦🏻‍♂️

TBH these are show-stoppers for going fully iCloud Drive. I just use "Synology Drive" with my Macs, with on-demand sync.

 

[ibash]

We always have had that. I've always set my to keep local copy of all iCloud Drive files when offline. This article while it seems to not mention that is referrring to people who have it set to unload files as needed etc, and with this change now even then you can force select files to stay downloaded. For those with enough storage space however, always better to have all files remain local.

I don’t believe that option exists on macOS.

Was looking for it last night when trying to fix my backup script for “resource deadlock errors”, which happens when files are offloaded.

 

[chrfr]

I don’t believe that option exists on macOS.

Was looking for it last night when trying to fix my backup script for “resource deadlock errors”, which happens when files are offloaded.

If you turn off the optimize storage option, you’ll keep all your iCloud files downloaded on the Mac.

 

[eduardodfj]

Why not.

Now, the biggest issue I find with the way macOS handles cloud storage is that, for whatever reason, every file downloaded to your drive is duplicated, so for every 100GB of storage that you do download and keep local, there is another 100GB also occupying space: one copy at username/Library/Group Containers and the other copy at username/Library/CloudStorage

It makes between zero and no sense.

 

[ibash]

If you turn off the optimize storage option, you’ll keep all your iCloud files downloaded on the Mac.

Thank you!

 

[Astrohunter]

We always have had that. I've always set my to keep local copy of all iCloud Drive files when offline. This article while it seems to not mention that is referrring to people who have it set to unload files as needed etc, and with this change now even then you can force select files to stay downloaded. For those with enough storage space however, always better to have all files remain local.

There is no such option on iOS.