iCloud Drive With or Without Desktop & Documents Folders 

It’s refreshing to see a presenter on RU-vid who is truly focused on the subject, makes a sincere effort at explaining to all levels of expertise, and is respectful of other possible opinions on the topic! I enjoyed your tutorial of iCloud Documents & Desktop feature.

WOW ! You are an educational genius !! 🔥 That presentation was phenomenal. First time I ever truly "got it". The accompanying chart drove it home. BRAVO ! The "best practices" advice is also killer 😊 and THANK YOU so much. !! 🙏❤

Excellent review. I was already familiar with this and have been using iCloud with desktop and documents for sometime. However you made this so clear and easy to understand. Thanks

Absolutely a perfect explanation of the iCloud Desktop. It confused me at first when I recently got my M1 Mac, but it’s a great feature for me. Thanks for this video and explaining it even further. The graphic is a perfect companion. 🇨🇦👍🏼

Whenever I need to setup anything on my Mac I come to your RU-vid channel, because I know I'll fine a relevant video related to what I need. Thank for the great content!

Great explanation! I have mine set up a little different. I have my iCloud turned off but I still have a Document and a Desktop folder in both my local and iCloud. I like it this way so I can pick and choose when I want to save something locally or on iCloud.

You explained in a few minutes what I have wondered for a decade. Thank you!

Thank you Gary for this. I have tried iCloud in the past and didn't understand the desktop feature. I currently use GDrive most of the time now, but everything I try has drawbacks. I have 1T One Drive cloud included with MS Office 365, but have never used it. Also, I pay for both iCloud storage to backup our phones and pay for GDrive storage to backup our rental business and church records. The identities of these can be a nightmare. I have 3 user accounts at Microsoft, 4 accounts with iCloud due to our phones, and 5 Google accounts including the church account. If I try to share, it gets really complicated, especially since both my wife and I take care of the rental business records. Thank God that I retired 2 years ago, because I worked for 2 different companies. I had in addition to the above, 2 iCloud accounts as I had 2 work iPhones and 2 Macbooks but with different MS Office 365 accounts and corresponding iCloud accounts.

This was extremely helpful. Love the documents folder for best practices advice. Makes perfect sense! You've got a new subscriber and a big thanks from a fellow RU-vidr. :)

Awwwhhh . . This takes the confusion out of everything I wondered about saving files and iCloud, Gary! ThkU you for your huge content contribution. I am WOW’d.

Hello Gary; you have the ability to make the complicated more comprehensible; what brilliance! I will use iCloud with confidence because I now understand it. And incidentally, having watched many of your video's, I have mastered Mac's "Pages" (love it) and will never go back to another word processor. THANK YOU 😶🌻

July 28th, 2022: Thank you, for making this simple to understand, this is exactly what I was wanting to understand and I got it watching your video one time. THANKS!

Thank you for giving me the confidence to move forward to make this feature work for me. I tried it once before and I freaked out - I couldn't understand where things were. This video has made it so much clearer for me.

Gary, this completely answered all my questions about cloud storage! Thank You again!

Gary you are an incredible asset for us Mac users. icloud has confused me for a long time and watching a couple of your videos today on the subject has finally made it come together. Thank you so much. You do this so well...even if I have to watch it several times for it to sink in! LOL

So helpful Gary. I'm going to show this at our Pi Afternoon Learners Meeting today!

Thank god for this well-organized video. I was going crazy trying to figure out what happened to my Desktop Folder. This explains it so well and I am relieved. Great job on this video. Oh, and the "chart" was significantly helpful to a visual person like me.

I could not for the life of me figure out where the local desktop and documents folders were. The added visuals were extremely helpful to since I was struggling to navigate the various storage folders. My iCloud is always over filled with documents so I was able to clear up so much space by moving said documents to the local folders. Thanks for making this awesome vid!

Perfect timing for this review, I'm just starting to set up my new Apple Studio as soon as a monitor gets here. Thanks!

The quality of your videos and explanations are way better than the intro (which looks a bit old fashioned). Thank you!

Gary, I’m just setup a new iMac (data from an old miniMac) for my wife and this was exactly my doubt, because she created a terrible confusion in her data. Thank you very much. Regards from Lisbon, Portugal, Europe. António

You have made me a Mac enthusiast! Best explanation & clarification I have seen. Gracias señor

This is my go to channel for getting the best from my Mac - thank you, keep up the great work.

Thank you so much. one of your other videos suggested the use of documents in iCloud. It was exactly what I needed to do today. This video reinforced and help me find out how I can make sure my file folders are arranged as I had them on the windows computer that I replaced. I was concerned this morning that files weren't in iCloud and my documents but this was the perfect video to see that I am on track and actually have my files where I want them and the file folders within the file folders within the file folders, etc as I wanted. Thank you for the precise information and great presentation

Brilliant! Thank you. This is just what I needed.

Thoroughly enjoyable! Love your work!

You are an excellent instructor. Thank you! I consider you one of my mentors. 🤩

Many thanks Gary for sharing your never ending knowledge. iCloud now makes sense. Thank you. Forget the rest, Gary is the BEST.

This is a feature of my Mac that took me time to understand when it’s actually quite simple. I use iCloud Drive as my default storage location. As for my desktop, I have two folders for various files I want to find quickly e.g. photos for eBay adverts. Other than that it’s empty.

Gary, been watching for long time! You are a genius!

The graphics showing iCloud Drive on and off was very helpful. Picture worth 10,000 words. Thank you.

Just like that! You are better than my morning coffee!! Thanks so much!

Great tutorial vids. I'm trying to sleuth a specific problem, but as a I click and watch, I'm learning all sorts of other things along the way. Some are simple that I'd never known. For instance: Command-click the header in Finder to see it's hierarchal location... Mind blown! Others are about strategies / choices that hadn't occurred to me. Thank you! Subscribed!

Great advice as always, Gary. Thanks so much! 🤗

Thanks so much Gary, this video cleared up a lot of confusion for me.

Thank you, I've been using iCloud for years and I didn't realise I could also keep local copies. I think it's confusing though and apple could simplify things

Great Explanation!! Thank you for sharing this!

thankyou this helped so much ive been having this problem for days

Very helpful video. Thanks so much for this.....Take care, Bluefin.

Many thanks for this video, incredibly clear.

great videos very clear and concise

Thank you so much for explaining so clearly.

Great. Idea. Makes this feature very clear!

same here.... i cloud drive n desktop .... thx much for clarifying it so clearly....

Well described. Now I just have to figure out how to also use my NAS to do something similar but for different reasons.

Amazing explanation and video appreciated by a brand new Mac user.

Wow! Very good info and well presented

SO HELPFUL!!!! THANKS VERY MUCH 🎉🎉🎉🌞

Thank you so much you break it down so well

Another GR8 video, Gary!!! I keep my documents / desktop folder on my main Mac - not on iCloud. (Photos and other things OK - on iCloud, but not Documents and Desktop). I have a very organized hierarchical structure to my Mac (and have had that since my Mac SE in 1989…) Under my HOME folder I have my "Steve-Main" folder which is 141 gb in size. (I don't use the "Documents" to store my personal data). In that I have 12 sub-folders (Steve-1, Steve-2, Steve-3 and 9 others-- thinks like Printers, Family, Macs, iOS etc.) Each sub-folder has from 4 to 18 sub-sub-folders (if I may express it that way) - for example Steve-1 has a Financial folder which has 8 sub-folders including Banks, Balance Sheets, Retirement etc. Banks includes my 8 financial institutes that I use (not all are strictly "banks") and then more sub-folders. Generally I don't go deeper than 10 sub folders. AND all this is intuitive. To access the key 50 gb of folders I use SugarSync - like having my Mac on my iPhone or iPad!! (I could store everything but only 40-50 gb are really "key" information to have all the time). Of course using "Image2icon" all my folders have artwork! A real joy to go to my Mac these last 34 years! Just upgraded to Big Sur -- I don't rush into new macOS's!! Steve on Tuesday 1 August 2023.

Fantastic video! Thanks so much!

Thank you, it’s so helpful ❤

Very helpful, thank you!

Thank you so much! It's clear now!

Thank you again!

Excellent Video Thank You!

Even when I don‘t use that, it is good to understand those mechanisms, we don‘t know when we are going to need it.

Great explanation.

Great job! thank you

Thank you, Garry!

I use icloud drive for documents and desktop, but many files go into a dropbox folder which is shared with my wife and has a folder shared with my son and daughter as well. I have a paid dropbox account which saves revisions for a month (I also use Time machine at home). I also pay for icloud drive. I don't need the amount of storage at all but the extra perks are worth it for me.

Thank you!

Hi Gary, great videos. If I move my desktop folder to ICloud, and then my Internet supplier has an internet outage ( which happens frequently ), I guess the files I had on my desktop would not be available... Correct?

Yes, thank you for patient voice of clarity. One question- how does one handle say Dropbox? I presume one moves its file contents to the iCloud Desktop and Folders?

Thank you. I was just debating turning this on. Question - what does TimeMachine backup then? Just the apps and the structure?

A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️

Thank you for the video. What happens if I deactivate iCloud Drive? Do things stay on the Mac or are they deleted from the Mac? Thank you.

It's amazing that I have used a mac for more years than I can count, & just now fully comprehend all this. I've used iCloud since day one. When I digitized all my photos, I put them directly in iPhotos (what it was called in those days), never physically on my Mac. I just didn't know better. I'm now wondering if I can make an external backup of all those photos that are now in Apple Photos?

“Family Sharing” of iCloud subscription makes it much more affordable. Switching from DropBox was a pain but made my life so much easier.

Nice!

Thank you for your detailed vdo on docs and folders, one thing i want to know that besides having docs and desk top backed up on icloud is there any way that all of our apps installed on mac gets backed up as other docs does and in case we switch to another mac same apps apears on my new mac as they were in my old, just like we have this feature in iphone. or may be its there and i dont know.

Another good one Gary. Quick question do have a video on finding duplicate files on a Mac? Also if you have a video on that as well. Not just excel files, but word, excel, .pdf, tax returns, etc.

Thanks for the clear instructions and explanation! How would this work in case of having multiple macs? If the Desktop and Documents folders are turned on in iCloud drive - Would that lead to having multiple folders or would it be labelled according to the computer

thank you

Hello. Thanks a lot for this very good explanation about iCloud Drive. Do you know how to configure to have some sub-folders available both in iCloud as well as in the local HD (in order to work offline without internet) ?

Thanks so much for your quick feedback!! Optimized was off. The problem might be that the computer is still syncing. My documents folder is 113 GB. My hard drive is 2TB (with 1.07 TB available, 32 GB of memory, Apple M2 pro, Sonoma 14.2.1. Opening documents, searching, or modifying documents became exceedingly slow after I turned on syncing. I am not able to modify Adobe documents except by waiting literally minutes for each change. What I want is to make use of the syncing feature, but continue to access my documents on the local drive instead of through iCloud first.

I use the Desktop as a sort of 'to do' list of things that need addressing soon, but not immediately. Once dealt with they're either deleted or then moved to Documents.

1:40, unless you use File Sharing and then Files App > 3 dots > Connect to server.

Hello Gary, Great Presentation I have 3 MacBooks with a Desktop and Documents on each one. If I turn on Desktop and Documents are the folders merged from the different MacBooks or I would have 3x different Desktop and Document in iCloud drive? Thank you

thanks for the great tips. I its showing currently 15 items to upload to iCloud folder, I don't know which files waiting to upload and how to delete recreate them again. and I don't know why it takes too long to upload these not huge files (1.6MB)

Great video. What if you are at a place with no internet connection, will you still able to access the Desktop and Document folders if they are stored into the iCloud Drive?

When I first tried that setting a few years ago, I panicked when the documents folder just disappeared as it was moved to iCloud Drive 😳. I think it would be better if it was replaced by an alias so the structure stayed the same, but the files store in iCloud. I also feel Documents & Desktop should be separate options, not all or nothing, although a way around that is to just move the Documents folder yourself & then create an alias 🤷‍♂️.

thanks gary for this very informative video. we appreciate the way you make them understandable for the non-tech people. i do have one question though, if i have two macs, and i turn on 'desktop & documents on iCloud', on say mac 1, what will happen on mac 2? will mac 2 automatically move its' document and desktop folders to the cloud and 'merges' with that of mac 1? or will I have to turn it on manually?

Thanks Gary, can you shed some light on why my MacBook Pro hard drive free space is constantly going down? I think it has something to do with iCloud since the Cloudkit file is over 100 Gb and slowly growing even when I am not active on the laptop. I think this is a common problem but haven't been able to find any useful answers elsewhere.

Hi, Thank you for this informative video. I was wondering if you would recommend doing something like this for the Applications folder if I wanted to sync my settings and preferences of apps across multiple Macs? Or perhaps there’s something else better you can recommend, I’d greatly appreciate it! 😊

Real Geniius of apple

Thank you for your video! I did as you explained. The two folders are still there and when I delete them they return. UUGG!!

Still not possible to have the Documents folder on an external drive? Great video, thanks a lot.

Very nice video, except that there is one thing you didn't mention. If you have Desktop & Documents checked in iCloud and you lose internet access on your Mac, you cannot access any of your files. I have Comcast internet access and this happens a few times a year, sometimes for as long as a day or two. I fear that some folks have internet providers whose service goes down more often that this. So, is there any way to sync Desktop & Documents with a Mac so the files are in both the cloud and the Mac?

Gary will iCloud Drive take a way any of my internal hard drive storage?

Hi Garry, I have been watching your videos since I got a Mac and you have been very helpfull. I just want to ask if it is possible to not use the desktop sync feature but still use the document sync feature on. I was just thinking maybe I can use either dektop or documents only.

I love the analogy about buying a luxury car and not taking it on the highway. iCloud is totally worth the few dollars a month. The only thing I found a little confusing here is the folder called "Local Documents". Is this literally a local folder you created called "Local Documents"? Perhaps in a previous generation of iCloud I remember there being a folder called this and it confused the heck out of me.

I have a documents folder from iCloud on my docs, but is there anyway to get the iCloud drive icon to dock? :) Thank you for your work!

Thanks. I’ve never used the documents folder on the Mac or windows and never regretted it. I’ve always stuck to the principle of being descriptive with names and avoiding generalities. As a result, this folder is empty.

Thanks for that very helpful video. I am just a bit confused about how to move folders that I seem to have inadvertently created in iCloud Drive back to my local drive. I dont want to delete them because my understand is that iff I delete from iCloud Drive, they will delete also from my device - so how do I move them back to the local drive without removing them altogether please! thanks so much,

Thanks for sharing this. I have always been nervous about using these folders via iCloud. Now, the real question is this: If you have two MacBook's, and both have that setting on to have the data in iCloud, does it sort of 'merge' the data?

You are excellent! Thank you! maybe do you know how I can include the Downloads folder, thanks. And also if i have OneDrive how can I add those folders to that location. Thank you

Gary, can I have icloud desktop and docs on on my powerbook and off on my desktop? Or does it turn it on globally?

Thanks for the great explanation. I wonder if actual syncing is possible with iCloud drive? I want to put a copy of my local folder to iCloud drive and while working in my local folder (creating new files, modifying existing files) I want the iCloud copy of that folder to get automatically updated with the changes I make. Is that at all possible?

Great video, Gary. I'm an Apple user, and I'm also paying for iCloud Drive, but iCloud drive has been rather confusing. For example, when I look at my Mac-level storage, it only shows my iCloud storage as one and the same. I wanted to put all the data on the cloud, in addition to my external drives, in order to be able to keep the Mac empty save for all the apps and settings. In my work, it's common to need to reformat my machine fairly regularly, so I don't want to store anything locally long term. How can I achieve this? Thanks!