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I was having issues uploading to icloud. the mac support person had me copy the desktop to icloud (not sure why). I decided not to use icloud in the end. can I delete the copy of my desktop from icloud without it causing any issues with my macbook air? thanks
MacBook Air 15″, macOS 14.6
Most of that stuff has no business being in iCloud Drive. Make sure that you have these folders somewhere else on you Mac.
I think that you may not fully get what iCloud does. iCloud Drive is a folder on your Mac. If you see a file or folder there, then you are seeing the that file or folder on your Mac. Putting a file in iCloud Drive just moves it to the iCloud Drive folder on your Mac from wherever it was on your Mac before. Otherwise, it's the same. Dragging a file from, say, Documents to iCloud Drive is exactly the same as dragging it from there to any place else on your Mac.
Things in your iCloud Drive are copied to iCloud.com where you can see them and use them from the browser. If you have other devices connected to iCloud, then the contents of iCloud Drive can be seen and used on those other machines, as well. But, the file or folder is local to you. This applies to anything you put in the iCloud Drive folder.
If you have "Optimize Mac Storage" turned on, then when your Mac's hard drive gets really full, like only 10% is free, some lesser used files will be removed to make room. When you need one of those removed files, the Mac will grab the copy at iCloud.com and copy it to your Mac where it will again become a local file. You always use local files. This should all happen transparently. Perhaps the biggest downside of "Optimize" is that backups may not include all your files. I don't do "Optimize" on my Mac, though I use it on my iPhone which has way less storage. To keep the room I need on my MacBook, I put stuff on a tiny (like 1 ounce) SSD that I carry around. I try to keep 20% of my internal drive free.
It looks like you tried putting some stuff in iCloud Drive that shouldn't have been there, and then you severed the connection, leaving copies at iCloud. You can go to iCloud.com to see what's there, and you can delete things on the web site. Try that with a thing or two and see if that does what you want.
Let us know how it goes...
I called Apple Support the other day, and the guy was very nice and helpful. It was something for which his actually seeing my screen provided insight. I've heard it can go either way....
And, yeah, I liked life before Apple Music, probably because I just like my own stuff. I have an old iPod mini or nano or whatever, and it seems so simple and pleasant.
Do you have Desktop & Documents Folders turned on
in System Settings>Apple ID>iCloud>iCloud Drive ? Do you have iCloud Drive turned on?
Where do you see the copy of Desktop in iCloud? What's in the Desktop copy?
hi Richard -
that was incredibly helpful! thank you so much! I dragged the 'desktop' icon from the iCloud drive to my desktop (it took something like 6-8 hrs), then dragged the contents of that file (macintosh HD) to 'macbook' (where it was supposed to be all along, right?). now everything works fine and my iCloud drive is essentially empty.
I'd just like to say how much more helpful you've been than Apple. their phone support told me to put the 'desktop' in the iCloud drive while they tried to help me figure out why I couldn't upload my 880GB music library to iCloud. in the end they had no idea why I was having the problem. after trying other cloud services (icedrive, onedrive), I eventually learned (via perplexity.ai) that my internet upload speed was too slow, and my internet would repeatedly crash from trying to upload that file (I gave up and it's not that important anyways).
to rant further... I'd read that transitioning from itunes to the new music app might have issues, and it was indeed a nightmare. my favorite part: the macbook randomly losing my beloved music files. I ended up at the 'genius bar' where the first guy clearly didn't have a clue, screwed up 3 HDs with duplicates of my music library. then the head genius came over (at my request), said the music app can't handle switching between external HDs, to just use one until it dies, then deal with it. so I went home, stuck to one HD - and it started losing files. perplexity has all kinds of suggested fixes, but concedes that a complete rebuilding of one's music library might be the only solution, so I just figured 'screw it', use my 2013 macbook as my music player. fortunately I still had another HD with the library on it, so I was able to restore all the HDs.
I'm never letting my new macbook touch my music HDs again!
thanks again,
Daniel
icloud drive is on. desktop & documents is off. icloud drive shows a 'desktop' file, with the following in the file:
can I delete the copy of my HD that's on icloud without it affecting my macbook air?
