Accidentally synced Documents & Desktop to ICloud. Please help!

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Level 1

4 points

Accidentally synced Documents & Desktop to ICloud. Please help!

I was running out of space on my Mac and the window popped up asking if I want to sync Documents & Desktop to iCloud. I accidentally clicked on it and now there is no Documents folder in Finder, the Desktop folder is empty. Documents and Desktop are under iCloud. Can you please help me undo it? I need them on my HardDrive, not on icloud! If I understood it properly, if I uncheck "Sync Documents & Desktop folders" (Apple ID->iCloud drive) I will lose the files on Mac. There are important files and I'm afraid to lose them. Please help me restore them!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.5

Posted on Oct 25, 2025 4:09 AM

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Answer 1

muguy

Level 10

91,148 points

Oct 25, 2025 5:00 AM in response to ShivOlga444

Once the sync completes, uncheck desktop and documents. You can then drag the files from iCloud wherever you would like

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Answer 2

ShivOlga444 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2025 7:26 AM in response to muguy

Thank you very much for your reply! I did it but it seems like it was too early and not all the documents were synced. Did I lose them then and is there a way to restore them?

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Answer 3

ShivOlga444 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 26, 2025 8:36 AM in response to muguy

I moved the files back to hard drive but it looks like I lost some of them because they were not synced properly. Can I restore them before backing up? Thank you very much for your help!

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