5/7/25
9:00 am

How iCloud Works With Your Files

iCloud provides Apple users with many benefits, including automatic syncing between devices. Learn how it actually works when you use iCloud Drive and other iCloud services with your Mac, iPhone and iPad.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's talk about how iCloud works.
So iCloud is Apple's cloud service that allows you to see the same files, photos, and other data across all of your Apple devices. It's designed to work seamlessly so your files will just appear everywhere. You don't have to configure very much or do much work on your part to make this happen. 
Now when you're talking about your files the part of iCloud that deals with that is iCloud Drive. But there is also iCloud Photos that deals with the photos in your Photos Library and other apps, like Notes, Reminders, Calendar, and so on use iCloud as well so you see the same documents across all your devices. In my examples here I'm going to talk mostly about iCloud Drive. But the same thing applies to those other services particularly iCloud Photos. 
So when thinking about your files this is how it typically works if you don't have iCloud or any other cloud service. You've got several devices. Let's say you create a file on each one of those. You only see the file you created on the device that you created it on. If you wanted to move a file to another device, like say move file A from your Desktop Mac to your MacBook, you could do that. You can manually move it and place it there. But it would be a copy of that file. You would now have actually two different files. One on your Desktop Mac and one on your MacBook. If you altered one it would not alter the other. So you would have to manually keep track of which file is the most current one and keep copying it back and forth as you update it. 
Now let's look at how this works with iCloud. With iCloud Drive if you had these four files and then you turned iCloud Drive on for all of these devices the first thing that would happen is each file, from each device, would sync with iCloud Drive and then iCloud Drive would sync back to all your devices. So file A would exist across all four devices as well as being in iCloud Drive. Technically you have five copies of that. You would never have to worry about that. It would appear as if you just have one copy of that file. So it is more useful to think of it this way where each device actually has a window to iCloud Drive. You can see the files that are stored in iCloud Drive but in fact you are viewing the same files, no matter which device you're looking on. 
So treat every file as if it is just one file, not copies of it on each device and on iCloud Drive. Treat iCloud Drive as if it is one single location that you can access from each of your devices. So let's look at some real life examples of how this works. 
You're working on your Desktop Mac and you update file B. What happens when you save that file is that file gets updated on iCloud Drive's server and then iCloud Drive then updates the file on all the devices. So everything is kept in sync. You don't need to do anything for this. You just open up file B on your Mac, you make a change, you Save, everything else is taken care of for you. 
What about adding a new file? Well that works in a similar way. Let's say while working on your iPad you add file E. Then that file goes to the iCloud Drive and then on iCloud Drive it syncs and appears on all your devices. 
What about deleting a file? Say we're going to delete file A while working on your MacBook. This deletion will then sync to iCloud Drive where the file is also deleted. Then iCloud Drive will trigger all your other devices to delete that file as well. That file is now gone. It's not available on any of your devices. Remember you're supposed to treat these files as if there is just one file in one location, iCloud Drive. So deleting that one file means that you'll see that it is gone everywhere. 
Note that iCloud Drive has a failsafe for this. There is a recently deleted folder on iCloud Drive where this file will then be stored for 30 days. So as long as you don't go in there and say Delete Now you have a chance to recover a file if you accidentally deleted it. Of course if you are working on your Mac you also will see this file in your Trash and you can pull it back from there as well. 
By the way if you find these videos valuable consider joining the more than 2000 others that support MacMost at Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon. 
But then what happens if you're not online? For instance, let's look at this situation where your iPad is Offline. Say you're accessing file C on your iPad. But you're not connected. You're somewhere where you don't have Wi-Fi and your iPad is just not connected at all to the internet. So you access file C and you make a change to it. Now what happens is you have a new version of file C on your iPad but your iPad has no way to communicate with Apple's iCloud Servers to tell it that there has been a change and that there is no way for your other devices to know about this change. So file C on iCloud Drive and on your other devices is now out of date with the old version. So what happens now is when you iPad connects again to the Server it will then update iCloud Drive and iCloud Drive will then update your other devices and everything is put back into sync. 
So how iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos works depends on a single setting called the Optimize Setting that is on your Mac. You would find this setting by going to System Settings and then go to iCloud and then go to Drive. You'll see it here. Optimize Mac Storage. Now let's take a look at a situation with those same four devices but in this case your Desktop Mac, where you have plenty of space on the internal drive, the Optimize feature is turned Off. But your MacBook where you have less space, a smaller internal drive, you've turned Optimize On on iPad OS and iOS optimize is always on. That is just how it works. There is no option to turn Optimize off. What happens in the situation if, say, you have a lot of files in iCloud Drive and some of your devices just don't have enough storage for all those files. On your MacBook where you have less space file D has not been accessed in months so it decides that it will offload file D. When you look you'll see file D there but it is like an empty envelope. The contents aren't there. A similar thing is happening on your iPhone. There is even less space. So file D but also file B is going to be offloaded. On the other hand on your iPad you have plenty of internal storage there. There is plenty of room for all the files. 
Now what would happen if you tried to access file D on your MacBook. Well, there is still some space on the drive. It is just trying to be cautious and making sure the drive is not filled up. So if you try to access file D then, it will actually load the contents from iCloud Drive and then open file D. Okay so what I described was that iCloud drive was making a decision for you based on how recently you accessed the file as to whether or not it was cached locally and available for immediate use without having to download from iCloud Drive. 
That's true! For instance here I'm looking at a list in the Finder of my files in my Documents folder and I can see with this column turned On here, which is the iCloud Status Column, that I've got some files that are in iCloud but are available right now. This is what that icon looks like. But I also have some files, like this one, where you see it has to download it. Just by clicking on that icon there you can see that it downloaded that file. So it is ready for use. This is handled automatically depending upon how much space you have and how recently you accessed each file. In other words how likely it is you'll be needing that file today. However, you can override this. If you Control click, right click or two-finger click on any file you can decide to keep a file downloaded. In other words override iCloud Drive and tell it, yes this file is one I don't want you to get rid of. I always want to have a cached version of this file on this Mac. This is very useful if you think you might be offline with this Mac or other device then you know you'll have this file available. You can do the same thing in a Files App for the iPhone and the iPad. You can decide how they are filed or, in fact, an entire folder as Keep Downloaded. Note if the file is already downloaded now I can also say Remove the download now. So if you have a large file or a bunch of large files or a folder filed with large files and you want to clear off some space you can use Remove Download to tell iCloud Drive to offload this file now and save the space on your local drive. So you do have the ability to manually override iCloud Drive's automatic caching of files..
Of course if you had Optimize turned Off then all of the files are always downloaded. So having Optimize turned off is ideal if you have plenty of space for all your files. Then you don't have to worry about this at all. 
So here's some answers to other questions that usually have about iCloud Drive. Can you store a file outside of iCloud Drive?  Yes, absolutely you can. So before I showed all of the files in iCloud Drive and you saw them on all the devices. But, it is more accurate to look at it this way. Each device has some local files and some iCloud Drive files. So on Macs this is typically folders in your Home folder. You've got folders there like Music, Pictures, and Movies. But you can create your own. For instance, I can go to my Home folder here and I've created a folder here called Local Documents. You can name it something else like Local Projects or whatever. I've put a bunch of files in here. These are all in my Home folder. Not in iCloud Drive which means that they are local only. So, in that situation for instance you may have say file X in your Home folder on your Desktop Mac. On your iPad, in the Files App, there is a section called On My iPad and on your iPhone it is called On My iPhone. This is where you would put local files that are not on iCloud Drive. So in this case I've created file Y on my iPad that is local only and one called file Z that is on my iPhone that is local only. Notice you can't see these files across any of your other devices. They are just stored locally. So you loose all the advantages of iCloud Drive but it could be useful in some situations. For instance file X maybe a huge video project that you just don't have room for or the internet speed to sync it with iCloud Drive so you're okay with that project only being on your Desktop Mac and not being available anywhere else. 
How about the opposite? Can you store files on iCloud Drive but not have them locally. Well, I already showed you this. If you've got Optimize turned on, say on your MacBook, you can have files be automatically not be taking up any space on your MacBook. You'll still see it there. As long as you don't try to access it, it's not going to try to download the contents. I showed you how to actually remove the download so that you can manually override iCloud Drive and say you don't want that file taking up any space locally. This is how you have a file stored on iCloud Drive Only and not on your local device. 
So this relates to another question, how does iCloud Drive save space? You have been told to use iCloud Drive because you don't have enough local storage on your Mac. Well, this is the optimizing feature. So on the example Desktop Mac here Optimize it turned Off and all the files available on iCloud Drive are also cached locally on your Mac and you're not saving any space at all. In this case the four example files take up 400mb of space and that is exactly how much space they are taking up on the Desktop Mac. But on the MacBook one of the files has been offloaded here automatically or by using the Remove Download in the Context Menu and you're saving 100mb of space and the same thing on your iPhone here.  Two files are actually off-loaded there. So use the Optimize feature on your Mac. Just toggling it on automatically saves you space. 
One last question I want to address. Is iCloud a backup? Well, the answer is yes and no. There are many reasons you want to have a backup. Two of them are if your device is lost or stolen or it breaks. Is iCloud Drive a backup in that case? The answer is yes. You see, say your Desktop Mac breaks or somebody steals it. Now you've lost all the files. Remember you had that file X in your Home folder. You also had a bunch of files in iCloud Drive. All of those are gone because the Mac is gone. However, you've got all the iCloud Drive files still stored on Apple's server in iCloud Drive. They are still there. In fact you get a new Mac, you sign into iCloud, then you look in iCloud Drive and you'll see those four files there. It will actually restore back to your Mac if there is room. However, file X, the one that was stored locally that no longer exists. It wasn't in iCloud. It only existed on the drive on the Desktop Mac. So if it is lost, stolen, or it breaks that file is gone forever, unless you use some other backup solution to make sure the file X is backed up. So, Yes, iCloud Drive is a backup and it will help you in cases if your device is lost, stolen, or breaks. But only if the file that you want to recover happens to be on iCloud Drive, not just stored locally. Actually a far more common uses for backups are when a file gets accidentally deleted or you make a change to it that you didn't intend and change your mind. If you delete a file that's in iCloud Drive remember you've got that little Recently Deleted folder. So it keeps files around for 30 days as long as you don't go in there are manually delete them. In a way it does allow you to recover a file that is accidentally deleted. Not as well as Time Machine or a lot of online backup services would which would keep the file, well, as long as the backup exists.
So iCloud Drive is better than nothing for this. But in the case where you are making a change to a file and the next day you regret that change you want to rollback to the previous version. That is actually a very useful feature of Time Machine, but not of iCloud Drive. You can't rollback to yesterday's version. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote actually have file revisions built-in to the files so you can do it for those. But for lots of other apps you wouldn't be able to simply go back to yesterday's files. You could do that with Time Machine and a lot of other online backups. 
So keep in mind iCloud is technically not a good backup because it fails on letting you rollback changes and it is very limited in how long you can recover a deleted file. But it is much better than nothing. If using another backup solution is very inconvenient for you, like you're a student always moving around with your MacBook, it is still much better to have that file stored in iCloud Drive than locally. Somebody steals your MacBook you could loose your term paper. But if it was stored in iCloud Drive you could just look at the Files App on your iPhone and there is the file. 
So hopefully I've given you a better idea about how iCloud works and answered some of your questions about it. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 26 Responses to “How iCloud Works With Your Files”

Brian Silverio

2 weeks ago

Another very nice video. Thank you.
I keep wondering if there is a way to store various files in iCloud that are not on my main drive.
I have 2TB of space in iCloud and only use 2 or 3 hundred gig.
Lets say I have a virtual machine on an external drive that takes 100 gig. Can I get that file onto iCloud somehow?
If I drag the folder to iCloud in the finder it wants to copy everything to my internal drive.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Brian: Yes. I mention this. 8:41. But definitely don't do that for something like a virtual machine file that is 100 gig. That would make it almost useless. To use it you'd need to download the whole 100GB again. No point to that.
I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish with that. Storing it on an external drive is fine. But online makes no sense.

Brian Silverio

2 weeks ago

Thank you!

Mary Lou

2 weeks ago

I disabled iCloud when I read it would delete files on my macbook if I delete them from the cloud. Sync scares me. I don't want to stream my files, I want the cloud to be a backup storage space only of my important stuff, while always keeping originals safe on my hard drive and on TimeMachine. Is that possible? I use a macbook; but all my other devices are Android, not Apple.

nick

2 weeks ago

Gary, do you know why the iCloud/Recently Deleted folder is available when I log into iCloud through the browser but is not available in iCloud Drive on the Finder app on the Mac? thx

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Nick: because it isn’t really a folder, it is a list of recently deleted files and is just made available in that environment. Remember, on a Mac you also have the Trash/Bin to act as a safety net. That’s not there on iOS and iPadOS though, so you have the extra safety net there.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Mary Lou: “safe” is a relative term. I would say things are safer on iCloud Drive than just on your Mac. They would be backed up to Time Machine in most cases (see https://macmost.com/how-time-machine-backups-work-when-using-icloud.html)

Ian

2 weeks ago

Very helpful thank you. Can I ask if turning off the 'Remove items from the bin after 30 days' on my Mac desktop overrides the delete after 30-days in iCloud Drive.

Only files deleted on the desktop Mac are in the macOS bin so it is not full proof for files deleted from iCloud Drive on the other devices, I believe.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Ian: Not sure what you mean. If you put something from iCloud Drive in the bin on your Mac, it will appear in both the Mac bin and in iCloud.com's Recently Deleted list. If you empty the bin it is gone in both places. If you have the bin set to empty after 30 days, then that matches the 30 days for "Recently Deleted" so it works the same.

Carmen

2 weeks ago

Thanks for making this so easy to understand. I was definitely thinking of iCloud as a backup resource. Also, I now understand that I don't need to have my Documents in iCloud because I have more than ample space on my MacBook. (I do use an external hard drive back up.)
I really appreciate these tips in your newsletters.

Peter von York

2 weeks ago

I notice that even though my photos library (Home>Pictures>Photos Library.photoslibrary) resides in my home folder, it's still syncing across my devices. Is this because I've ticked the iCloud Photos checkbox in Photos settings? Just want to make sure I understand if/why this is an exception to the rule that files in the home folder do not sync.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Peter: Yes, iCloud Photos is a separate iCloud service from iCloud Drive. It works in a similar way as iCloud Drive, but the data (photos) is stored in that library you mention in your Pictures folder.

Ian

2 weeks ago

Gary, I was trying to ask was the impact on iCloud Drive files of turning off the 'empty after 30-days' on my Mac.

It seems iCloud Drive files deleted on the Mac will always be recoverable from the Bin but iCloud Drive files deleted on iOS or iPadOS devices will get permanently removed after 30-days.

This may lead to confusion but also suggests I should never delete iCloud Drive files anywhere but on my Mac.

Is this correct?

Hopefully, this makes sense now. Thank you for your help.

Philip Rand

2 weeks ago

Clear as usual! One point: I work on a database called Claris Filemaker. In Filemaker I develop various dbs, which I send from iCloud drive to iPad and to iPhone. It seems as if I must manually send them to the Apps in iPad and in iPhone, which are called Filemaker Go. I go to iCloud drive and use the share function to update each of my database files in the handheld devices. For example I have "culture", "home" (expenses and activities related to my property), inventory (my possessions), etc.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Ian: Depends on what you want. The "Recently Deleted" list acts as a 30-day safety net. You can set the trash/bin to "Remove Items From the Trash After 30 Days" to match that and both things are a 30-day safety net. But if for some reason you want more than 30 days, you can turn that off and then things in the trash on your Mac will stay there until you empty it. But you should never put anything in the trash/bin nor delete it on iOS/iPadOS unless you are sure you want to delete it. These safety nets are just for accidents and mistakes, not to be used as a holding area for things you may or may not want to delete.

Barry Wilson

2 weeks ago

Gary as usual a great explanation of how iCloud works, the graphical explanation on screen makes it so easy to understand.
Thank you.

Karen

2 weeks ago

I think of iCloud Drive as a separate app whose only function is to synchronize files. Too simple?

Tom Booth

2 weeks ago

My Mac and iPad are not syncing all contacts that are in my iPhone. How can I force a total update to include all the iPhone contacts to all devices? Know that many iPhone contacts were imported from MS Skype when it was a thing - could that be the issue?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Tom: Sounds like maybe some of those contacts are "On My iPhone" or in Google or some other service. See https://macmost.com/clean-up-your-contacts-app.html

Tim Woolmer

2 weeks ago

I have lost an iCloud file. A very important spreadsheet I use every day. One day it wasn't there. Not in the recently deleted section either. So now I include it in my Time Machine backup.

gay abarbanell

2 weeks ago

the explanation of icloud is very helpful but i am new to mac and can not find many of the items you mention. visuals are really helpful and much appreciated.
ie..showing

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

Gay: What, specifically, can you not find?

2 weeks ago

Gary - Exceptional videos, Thank You.
I have been wrestling with iCloud over the last few days due to my 1 TB MacHD has filled up and I can't seem to be able to "Remove Download" of two large folders that downloaded from my 2 TB iCloud Drive. My ultimate goal was to download one of the large folders, back it up with Time Machine, remove the download, and then repeat the process with the other folder so that I had a complete backup. (Continued...)

JD (Part 2)

2 weeks ago

JD-Part 2
I couldn't get the "Remove Download" on the first folder to appear so I went ahead and downloaded the other large folder, thinking the "Optimize Mac Storage" would simply make room for the new folder automatically. Instead, my MacHD filled up and started throwing errors. I decided to turn off the "Sync this Mac" option and thought I had solved it, but apparently not because I have once again filled up my MacHD. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 weeks ago

JD: Hard to suggest something because by turning off "sync this Mac" you have really thrown an act of random chaos in there, if you know what I mean. I don't know what state things are in right now. You'll need to keep working with it. I can't be of much help since I can't see what is going on. Probably should have tried smaller groups of files instead those entire large folders.

1 week ago

Thanks, Gary. I did some additional research and found that many, many others have faced the same situation I did and were equally frustrated… MacHD fills up, Remove Download is unavailable and disk full messages start occurring. I had no choice but to reset my Mac to Factory settings and in the process I watched my iCloud Drive on my Mac go to zero, right before the reset started. All is well now, but it was a bummer to have to fight this battle on my own.

How iCloud Works With Your Files

Comments: 26 Responses to “How iCloud Works With Your Files”

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