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. !! 🙏❤

It’s refreshing to see a presenter on KZfaq 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.

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

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. 🇨🇦👍🏼

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

Thoroughly enjoyable! Love your work!

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.

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 😶🌻

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

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

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

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 KZfaqr. :)

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.

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

Thank you again!

Thank you so much for explaining so clearly.

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

great videos very clear and concise

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

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

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

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

Many thanks for this video, incredibly clear.

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

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!

Thank you so much you break it down so well

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

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

Thank you!

Excellent Video Thank You!

Great. Idea. Makes this feature very clear!

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

Very helpful, thank you!

Great Explanation!! Thank you for sharing this!

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

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!

Fantastic video! Thanks so much!

SO HELPFUL!!!! THANKS VERY MUCH 🎉🎉🎉🌞

Wow! Very good info and well presented

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

Thank you, it’s so helpful ❤

Thank you, Garry!

Thank you so much! It's clear now!

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

Great job! thank you

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.

Great explanation.

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

thank you

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

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.

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

Real Geniius of apple

Nice!

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 🤷‍♂️.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

ur goated

I liked the video , now you know

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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)

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Hi, one thing I do use is naming a folder name.nosync then it will not sync to the cloud. Thanks for the great vid.

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

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?

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.

Never understood the Desktop feature after all these years. Thank you! How do I clear out the clutter and not lose the docs? If you answer me I'll give to Patreon :)

What ‘WOW’ said.

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?

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 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.

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

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 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?

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!

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

If I turn on the desktop and documents feature in my iCloud, will it clear up any space on my Mac?

Gary, this was one of the most helpful videos for many of us to clear the misconceptions around iCloud's Documents and Desktop folder settings and configurations. Thanks for adding the slides that made the content easier to follow and understand. Question: Let's assume I have the Documents and Desktop folders option turned on in iCloud Drive but I don't have large enough internal SSD to fit the Documents folder content on my computer, regardless I have the "Optimize Mac Storage" box checked or unchecked. If I run Time Machine, only a subset of the documents that is cached locally would show up in the backup. Per my knowledge, as of today, TM still doesn't support iCloud backup on the Macs just on iOS devices 😕. Do I have any other option than use a third-party backup application if I don't want the iCloud Documents be copied to an external drive whenever a backup is due? What that application could be?