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colson0804 Author

Level 1

5 points

Audio files are unplayable after being uploaded to iCloud drive

Hey there. I have a number of audio files (.aif and .wav) for music production projects that I can no longer open on my Macbook. I see the files in Finder but can't seem to open them with any application. There's no cloud icon next to the files indicating that they're remote. They all have pretty reasonable file sizes (~50MB, not 1KB or something like that). Furthermore, I can play the files when I visit https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/, so I know they exist in an uncorrupted state. I just can't open them locally on my computer and there's no indication to me that they aren't downloaded.

Please help! Happy to give more info about things I've tried.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Aug 1, 2022 10:53 AM

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4 replies

BrianK90

Community Specialist

Aug 2, 2022 12:07 PM in response to colson0804

Hey colson0804,

Just to confirm, do you see the cloud icon with an arrow pointing down to allow you to redownload the files from your iCloud Drive? Please see this user guide, and let us know if it helps:

Upload and download files from iCloud Drive on iCloud.com

We'll be waiting for your response.

Cheers!

colson0804 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 18, 2022 4:09 PM in response to Dustin_R_308

Hey Dustin,

My apologies for the late response. There's no error message that I saw. The file simply doesn't open when I click on it. Any programs that opens the file (Ableton, Audacity) doesn't recognize that the file exists.

You're right though, the issue is fixed by deleting and redownloading the files. It's pretty tedious to fix, but I know what to do now.

Thanks for your help!

Aug 3, 2022 2:27 PM in response to colson0804

colson0804,

Thanks for confirming. What is the exact error you are seeing when you try to play these files? Does the issue remain if you delete a file then redownload it?

Regards.

colson0804 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 2, 2022 6:00 PM in response to BrianK90

Hey! As I said, there's no cloud icon next to the files indicating that they need to be downloaded.

Audio files are unplayable after being uploaded to iCloud drive