iCloud removes small / recent files from local drive before large / old.
I've been using iCloud for years, I always use optimise storage. I have more stuff in the cloud than will fit on my local drive. Recently it's become more random in what it decides to remove from my local drive. For example, I saved several very small excel sheets, the next day working off line they were all unavailable, but large files saved weeks ago were still there. It should remove large / old before small / recent. This used to work well, but seems to have become confused. Currently I have 157GB of 245GB used on local, 550GB in the cloud.
MacBook Air M2 2022
Sonoma 14.6.1
MacBook Air, macOS 14.6