Silly question, but where is my local Documents folder?

[chiggins1066]

I am running Tahoe on a MacBook Pro, with iCloud enabled

when I go into finder and select my home directory /users/home/ I don't see a Documents folder

looks like it is getting cached somewhere, but where?

 

[estabya]

They are located in Mobile Documents folder in your user library, but it's hidden by default. In finder click Go, Go to Folder, and type ~/Library/Mobile Documents.

 

[Mike Boreham]

They are located in Mobile Documents folder in your user library, but it's hidden by default. In finder click Go, Go to Folder, and type ~/Library/Mobile Documents.

That is where the files actually exist if you have Documents & Desktop in iCloud enabled, but they are not nicely organised there.

EDIT: just checked my mine (MBA on 26.3.1 with D&D in Cloud enabled) and there is no longer a Mobile Documents folder in ~/Libary so it looks like Apple is doing some more jiggery pockery with shortcuts than I was aware of.

EDIT again: I normally use Path Finder and see that ~/Library/Mobile Documents appears in Path Finder, but if I turn off Path Finder and use Finder, there is no Mobile Documents folder. It looks like Apple have made it invisible from Finder even with user library enabled, and invisibles made visible.
There is a ~/Library/iCloud Drive/Documents visible in Finder with invisibles enabled. Somewhat puzzled!

EDIT again again: On my back up drive Finder does show ~/Library/Mobile Documents/....but not on my boot drive, so seems Apple is now hiding it with Finder on the boot volume.

In normal use I use these:

-the “iCloud Drive” shortcut Apple puts in the Sidebar in the Locations section.

“Documents” is still an item in the pop-up from your user directory in the Dock.

-by adding “Documents” to Favorites in the Sidebar.

Ironically if you navigate to your user directory on a backup there is a ~/Documents folder!

 

[estabya]

That is where the files actually exist if you have Documents and Desktop in iCloud enabled, but they are not nicely organised there.

What do you mean by "they are not nicely organized?" Directories in mine are structured the same way as they would be without iCloud Docs enabled.

 

[Mike Boreham]

What do you mean by "they are not nicely organized?" Directories in mine are structured the same way as they would be without iCloud Docs enabled.

Do you actually see a ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder with Finder on your booted volume? I don't, but believe I have in the past.

As I said I do see ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder with Finder on my backup drive, but my usual folders in Documents are actually in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents. The Mobile Documents folder also contains all the other app based iCloud Drive folders as in this screenshot.

 

[estabya]

Do you actually see a ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder with Finder on your booted volume? I don't, but believe I have in the past.

Yes. It's hidden but you can access it from Finder by clicking Go, Go to Folder (or Shift, Command, G) and pasting in the directory "~/Library/Mobile Documents".

 

[svenmany]

That is where the files actually exist if you have Documents & Desktop in iCloud enabled, but they are not nicely organised there.

EDIT: just checked my mine (MBA on 26.3.1 with D&D in Cloud enabled) and there is no longer a Mobile Documents folder in ~/Libary so it looks like Apple is doing some more jiggery pockery with shortcuts than I was aware of.

EDIT again: I normally use Path Finder and see that ~/Library/Mobile Documents appears in Path Finder, but if I turn off Path Finder and use Finder, there is no Mobile Documents folder. It looks like Apple have made it invisible from Finder even with user library enabled, and invisibles made visible.
There is a ~/Library/iCloud Drive/Documents visible in Finder with invisibles enabled. Somewhat puzzled!

EDIT again again: On my back up drive Finder does show ~/Library/Mobile Documents/....but not on my boot drive, so seems Apple is now hiding it with Finder on the boot volume.

In normal use I use these:

-the “iCloud Drive” shortcut Apple puts in the Sidebar in the Locations section.

“Documents” is still an item in the pop-up from your user directory in the Dock.

-by adding “Documents” to Favorites in the Sidebar.

Ironically if you navigate to your user directory on a backup there is a ~/Documents folder!

It's a confusing situation because Finder doesn't really tell you what is in the file system. Using terminal I can figure out where things are before Finder paints a different picture.

I have Documents stored in iCloud. In my file system, the actual files are in ~/Documents. Also

~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents is a symbolic link to ~/Documents.

Finder suppresses the display of Documents and Desktop when showing the home folder. QSpace does not. Finder does not do this suppression when looking at a clone I have.

Finder and QSpace use some API to display the contents at the top level of the "iCloud Drive"; they aren't just reading the file system at a particular path. Both of them show Documents and Desktop. Finder shows them as if they were normal folders. QSpace shows them as links. The two programs actually show different lists of folders suggesting that they are using different API calls.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Yes. It's hidden but you can access it from Finder by clicking Go, Go to Folder (or Shift, Command, G) and pasting in the directory "~/Library/Mobile Documents".

Not for me not after doing that or after making all invisibles visible and navigating. Just goes to the alias of iCloud Drive in the Sidebar. Below is what I see after entering ~/Library/Mobile Documents in the Go to Folder box.

As I said I can go to ~/Library/Mobile Documents in Path Finder on the boot drive but not with Finder.

 

[Starfia]

when I go into finder and select my home directory /users/home/ I don't see a Documents folder

From this support article:

In macOS Tahoe 26 or later, you can find your Desktop and Documents folders in iCloud Drive in the Finder sidebar, under Locations.

(Is that what you're asking?)

 

[chiggins1066]

Not for me not after doing that or after making all invisibles visible and navigating. Just goes to the alias of iCloud Drive in the Sidebar. Below is what I see after entering ~/Library/Mobile Documents in the Go to Folder box.

As I said I can go to ~/Library/Mobile Documents in Path Finder on the boot drive but not with Finder.

View attachment 2614469

what is Path Finder?

I am getting the same thing you are above

 

[chabig]

-by adding “Documents” to Favorites in the Sidebar.

This is what I do. When I see Documents in the sidebar, I don't care where exactly they're located in the file system.

 

[Mike Boreham]

what is Path Finder?

I am getting the same thing you are above

Path Finder is a Finder alternative, like QSpace mentioned by @svenmany. More discussion about Finder alternatives in this thread.

 

[estabya]

It appears as though ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ is some sort of alias for a virtual directory containing whatever iCloud data Apple has decided should go there... That is annoying.


The actual documents/desktop folders syncing with iCloud are still located in your home directory, just hidden.

 

[svenmany]

It appears as though ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ is some sort of alias for a virtual directory containing whatever iCloud data Apple has decided should go there... That is annoying.

I think that is close to the truth. I don't mean to pretend I really understand this, but here's what I see.

I do believe that terminal is not lying to me. By that I mean that I expect the "ls", "cd", "pwd", and such commands to accurately represent the APFS file system. In terminal, ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ is not an alias; it is just a normal directory. However, the following directories

~/Library/Mobile Documents/
~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox
~/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive-...
~/Library/CloudStorage/OnDrive-Personal
~/Library/CloudStorage/ProtonDrive-...

all have the com.apple.file-provider-domain-id extended attribute. This alters how Finder works with those directories. Apple's intention seems to be that you don't try to look directly at those directories in Finder, but rather use the associated entry in the Location section of Finder's sidebar.

 

[estabya]

That makes sense to me, @svenmany. I can also see a much more comprehensive view of that directory in terminal than I can in Finder. There are dozens of subdirectories in ~/Library/ Mobile Documents that do not show in Finder, even with hidden files showing.

In any case, in regard to what the OP originally asked, iCloud documents local version are stored in the same location as they would be without iCloud enabled /Users/username/Documents. The folder is just hidden when you enable iCloud D&D.