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User profile for user: Fred.Bal4
Fred.Bal4 Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Is iCloud drive archived on my local “Macintosh HD”?

My 500 Gb “Macintosh HD” has 18GB available. I running Monterey and about to update to Ventura. I’m running Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, and BackBlaze.


  • In the last week, I’ve uploaded two folders of photos to iCloud Drive each containing about 40GB.
  • I expected to see my available space increase to 98GB (The 18 reported plus 40 + 40 for the two folders.)


A thread from Nov 2020 (iCloud Files Taking up Hard Drive Space - Apple Community) described macOS as “archiving” iCloud uploads on the local disk for 30 days.

  • Am I constrained to waiting for 25 more days to see if the local drive starts to “free up”?
  • Is there documentation that I can read that gives a broader description of what is going on ?
  • Is there a way that I can force all iCloud uploads to occur and then free up what appears to be an archive?



MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Mar 27, 2023 5:59 AM

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User profile for user: muguy
muguy
User level: Level 10
82,483 points

Posted on Mar 27, 2023 6:18 AM

No, your Mac does not "archive" iCloud Drive. But, iCloud is a synchronization service, not offline storage. Any files in iCloud are also on your Mac. If you elect to optimize storage, your oldest/largest files will be offloaded to cloud only as space is needed on your Mac.

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User profile for user: muguy
muguy
User level: Level 10
82,483 points

Mar 27, 2023 6:18 AM in response to Fred.Bal4

No, your Mac does not "archive" iCloud Drive. But, iCloud is a synchronization service, not offline storage. Any files in iCloud are also on your Mac. If you elect to optimize storage, your oldest/largest files will be offloaded to cloud only as space is needed on your Mac.

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Is iCloud drive archived on my local “Macintosh HD”?

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