How To Use iCloud Without Worrying About Losing Access To Your Files

If you use iCloud Drive you could end up without access to some of your files if you have no Internet connection. Here's how to make sure important files are available even when you are offline.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can be sure you can work with your iCloud Drive files even if you're offline. 
Now when you use iCloud Drive your files are all stored on the iCloud Drive servers. But you can also access them on your Mac just like they're there locally on your Mac.  
However, if you're offline you may not have access to all of your iCloud Drive files. That's because some of your files are cached locally and other may not be. It depends on how much space you've got on your local drive. For instance here in this folder I can see there are two files that have this little icon here. This shows that while the files appear here to be normal just like the rest they are actually not cached on my local drive. They're in iCloud Drive on the server. If I were to try to open one of these files what would happen is it would automatically download them from the server and open them as normal. If the files aren't very large you may not even notice the difference. The files would just simply open and wouldn't even seem to take more time than the other files. But these other files are actually cached locally so they don't need to be downloaded before being opened. How it decides which files are opened locally and which files are not depends on how recently you've access the file. If you haven't access the file for a long time it is Off Loaded, meaning it looks like it is still there but the actual contents of the files aren't on your local drive. So it saves space on your drive. Many or perhaps more of your files may be like this. They are files you haven't used in awhile so your Mac's not going to store them locally. It's going to rely on the internet connection being able to download them from iCloud Drive on demand when you need them. If you're connected to the internet this works great. You just double click on a file, like this one, and it will download and you can even see it happening right there. Then it opens up. Unless you pay careful attention you may not have even noticed what was going on. Now if I were to close this you can see that the indicator is no longer there. That's because it is cached locally because it is a file I just recently accessed. So your Mac is going to be smart about it and say, well if you just used this file chances are you may need to use it again soon. I'm going to keep this one cached locally. Meanwhile in the background, at some point, it may decide another file hasn't been accessed in thirty days or sixty days or however long and it decides to offload that one. That gets this little icon here and it should be downloaded again before you use it. 
But that brings up the problem of what if you're not connected to the internet. What if you are completely offline. You're traveling. You're out of your home away from work. But maybe you're completely away from any kind of internet connection and there's no way to connect to the internet. If you were to open up anyone of these files with this indicator here it wouldn't be able to download it. Let's take a look at what happens if I actually go in here and turn off WiFi. So now I've got no connection to the internet. If I double click it you can see it gives me an Error message. It can't connect to the server. You're not connected to the internet. There's no way for it to get the information in this file. But meanwhile other files here, that have been downloaded, are cached locally and they can be opened as normal. You can make changes to them. If you make changes what will happen is that when you Save them you can see that this little cloud icon here is saying it hasn't synced yet to the server. But the next time you're connected to the internet again it will actually do that syncing and then this icon will in fact go away. You can see it here. Once it updates it syncs with iCloud this file will loose this icon here, like that, and now the changes have been saved to the service.
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So how to avoid an important file like maybe this one not being available to you. Well, first let's check System Settings. In System Settings if you go to iCloud and then you click on Drive right there there is a setting here for Optimize Mac Storage. If you have this switched Off that tells your Mac to cache all of the files locally. Every file you've got on iCloud Drive will also be present on your Mac fully cached. This works great to make sure all your files are available all the time. But it only works if you have enough storage space on your local Mac. If say you have a terabyte of data in iCloud Drive, but you only have half a terabyte of drive space on your Mac then that is not going to work. It can't fit a terabyte of data into half a terabyte of space. So you would have to use Optimize Mac Storage in that case. 
So if you have it Off then there is no problem. But if you have it On, like most people do, then there is a problem because you do have files like this that may not be available if you are offline. 
So the first thing you can do is nothing. You can just let iCloud Drive figure out which files you have used recently and have those available locally. Chances are this will fit almost all situation. Imagine you're on an airplane and you need to access a file it's probably a file you recently have been working with. Therefore it will be cached locally. So, you can just let your Mac do its thing and keep the recent files downloaded and not worry about it. Maybe you actually will run into a situation where you need an older file and don't have it. Hopefully in that case there are other things you can work on at that time. But in most cases, for most people, you don't have to do anything. Just let, kind of, your Mac algorithm for what is cached and what isn't work on its own to figure out what files you need. 
But let's say you notice that a file like this isn't cached locally on, say, your MacBook and you want to make sure it is there when you're traveling. Well, one thing to do is simply open it! Just double click it to open it and by doing so it will download it just like it did this Pages document here and you've got it. So you didn't do anything special. Nothing new commands. Just make sure you've opened that important file you think you may need if you notice it isn't already cached locally and it should be there if you need it later today or tomorrow when you're offline. 
However there is another thing you can do. If you were to select a file and then control click on it, two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse, to bring up the Context Menu there is an option here for Download Now. That does the same thing as opening it and closing it again but without actually opening it. It will actually download the file. It will be a good indicator to your Mac that you need this file. It will count it as, kind of, being access recently and the chances are very good it will remain there for a long time. This could be very useful because you can do it for multiple files. Like, for instance, if you need all of these, maybe even some of these, you can now Control Click, two-finger click, or right click and you can download now for all of those. You can even do it for an entire folder so a folder like this. You want the entire thing you can go and Download Now and it will make sure all of the files in here get downloaded and are available offline. 
Now you may have noticed another option here. Keep Downloading. This is new in macOS Sequoia. What this does is not only download the file now but it will remember that this file is extremely important and should always be kept cached locally. So in cases where you absolutely must have a file no matter what, whether you're online or offline, you want to indicate Keep Downloaded for a particular file. You can see it indeed downloaded this one here and it gives this little indicator here showing you've marked this one as it always must be there. It says Kept Downloaded. You can go back to the Context Menu here and see there is a checkmark next to it. If you decide you want to turn it off for that file you can certainly turn it off there.
A few other tips here. Note that in the Finder's List View you get this little icon here but you can Control Click or two-finger click on the Header here and actually add iCloud Status as its own column. So the idea there is that then you can click on and sort the files here by their status. In this can you actually get a cloud here meaning it is downloaded. You can see if I hover there the tool tip shows that, but the cloud with the little arrow there says In iCloud meaning don't have it cached locally. 
For files that are cached locally, if say you've got a really big one, maybe video or something like that and you want to clear up space on your local drive, you can select it and in the Context Menu you can choose Remove Download. So that will indicate to it that I don't think I need this file any time soon so save the space on the drive now. It doesn't make sense to do it for small files. But you can certainly select several files like this and as long as all of them are cached locally you will see Remove Downloads and be able to remove all of them.
So if you need to make sure that some files are always available to you even if you are offline you can either turn Off the Optimization for iCloud Drive to have everything available offline. Or you can use Keep Download to make sure a particular file or set of files is available to you. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “How To Use iCloud Without Worrying About Losing Access To Your Files”

Roy Whelden

3 days ago

Very helpful. Thanks!

Scott

15 hours ago

Gary Rosenzweig remains the best Mac teacher anywhere, bar none. No one comes close. He has the uncanny ability to never—in years of videos—to utter a single filler word (uh, ah, um). He always gets right to the point, never goes off topic, always explaining each important detail so that all levels of users understand what feature is being explained. I only recently learned that Gary has degrees in both computer science and journalism, which helps explain his high level of skill.

Philip Wood

14 hours ago

Excellent video Gary. The way iCloud drive works seems to be a little different from other similar solutions. I now have a better understanding of how it's internal algorithm works. Thank-you.

Fran H

13 hours ago

I have a MacBook Air M1, 2020..with Sequoia 15.2 and when I try to add the column to show the download status in the Finder's list view, it does not have it as an option ... Is it possible I have something clicked on that is not allowing it to give me that function?

Gary Rosenzweig

Fran: Are you sure you are looking at a folder that is in iCloud Drive?

kathleen m. kinan

12 hours ago

gary, how does this work between devices? for instance, i work on a desktop primarily/during the day. i might travel and take my laptop or ipad to make a presentation or continue working remotely while waiting for a doctor's appointment (where, i've learned the hard way, internet access i often restricted). what happens then?

Kathleen: Use the Keep Downloaded on the device you want. But also keep in mind that if you access a file on one device, it should be seen by all as a file you recently accessed and it will likely be available in the cache on all of them.

Pschemek

11 hours ago

Hi Gary,
Thanks for the very useful info. Question regarding Photos: can you keep only part of your library in iCloud? I bought only 200GB storage but my library is much bigger. What happens then - can I decide which pics / albums to keep on iCloud and which to keep on my Mac? If not possible, is there a way to keep photos library on external drive? Thanks

Pschemek: No, the whole library is stored in iCloud. I recommend you go to the next tier then. Otherwise, you can remove some content from your library. For instance, I choose to keep most of my video outside of Photos and just use my Photos library for actual photos. I just store them in files. You could take some photos and store them in a second library (non-iCloud) but this creates all sorts of problems as you'll be switching between libraries constantly just to find photos. I do not recommend that.

Zaph Mann

5 hours ago

the left hand column in my system settings looks nothing like yours and I don't even see "icloud" as an option - I'm on 14.4 (23E214)

Zaph: You are using macOS Sonoma. I'm showing macOS Sequoia here (I mention that in the video)

How To Use iCloud Without Worrying About Losing Access To Your Files

Comments: 11 Responses to “How To Use iCloud Without Worrying About Losing Access To Your Files”

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