Can anyone explain how iCloud works, total mystery to me!

Hi WicklowMan2013,

So iCloud is a synching service across devices, so you must have enough storage on each device to hold all the desired synched "items" between devices. What I would suggest you do though is this:

1. Look at how much of your Photos, Music, Movies, documents (all), etc., that you have synchronizing between your iMac, MacBook Air, and iPhone through iCloud.
2. How much of them do you really need doing that?
3. You say you only have 11GB of space on your MacBook Air and yet, 360GB available on your iMac; what is the full disk capacity and how much can you safely offload to an external drive? This may be a case of you having to juggle around files for a bit.
4. Do you have an external drive you can move less frequently used stuff to? You can move large things like your possible Photos Library, Music Library and Movies Library off your MacBook Air's internal drive to the external drive.
5. Are you comfortable going into your iMac, MacBook Air, and iPhone iCloud settings and turning off synching of the biggest culprits?

On your Macs, go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud and look over both Photos and the iCloud Drive Options, can you turn off them? You can (for Photos) turn off the sync and have 30 days to download any photos and videos therein (or a faster solution might be to connect your iPhone and iPad by cable to your Mac and have them synch their Photos to your Mac's Photos and then delete the iPhone and iPad versions.

On your iPhone, go to Settings > your Name at the top > iCloud > check then what you have enabled and synchronizing to iCloud. Also go into Manage Storage and review what you have using up space therein.

I know this is a lot to take in. What I can suggest is, take a hard look at your reasons for using iCloud and what you really need to have synched across devices. I say this as, once you know what you really need and know how much space that takes up, you can start to formulate a plan (we are happy to offer advice here on the forums) of how to get there and save you time, money and frustration.

So, what I suggest you do is:

1. Take a screenshot of your current MacBook Air's storage setup (Apple Menu > About this Mac > Storage) and post it back here. Do the same with your iMac
2. Do the same with your iCloud Storage (Apple Menu > System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud Storage.
3. Break down your reasons for using iCloud and also, what you use each device (iMac, MacBook Air and iPhone) for. Are you duplicating this across devices that may be (though nice to have) not the best use of either the device's space, capabilities and/or iCloud resources?

I know I have put a lot on your to digest. Take it with a grain of salt, breathe and when you're ready, write back. I am sure, we in the community, can offer advice to make you both love your Apple devices again, use them well and not drive you crazy.

Cheers,

Anthony

Hi WicklowMan2013,

So, you cannot nominate folders in iCloud like you can in Dropbox (a nice feature though).

What I would suggest, based on your reply is the following:

1. If everything on your MacBook Air exists on the iMac, wipe the MacBook Air and setup anew, as per my notes originally.
2. If you are going to go the Dropbox route (which, for speed and in your use case, appears a viable option), download and install it on your MacBook Air and iMac; but do not enable it yet on your MacBook Air yet, or on the iMac just yet; just log in on your iMac. Let your iMac be your primary Mac; the MacBook Air being the secondary Mac.
3. On the iMac, I would copy the folders you want from iCloud to your Dropbox folder, login to Dropbox and select the folders you want to nominate (I would suggest all). Let them upload. Once you have confirmed they are there, you can uncheck iCloud Drive on your iMac.
4. On the MacBook Air, log in and go into Dropbox, nominate which folders to download and have synched back up to Dropbox. You don't need to enable iCloud Drive on your MacBook Air, as you will be getting rid of it.
5. If you don't need your iCloud Mail synched (if you don't use Apple as your mail provider, disable it on all your devices, it might save you same space)

Now, if you don't want to go the above route fully, you can do the following:

1. Skip step 1 above.
2. Disable iCloud Drive on the MacBook Air and then, once it is done disabling itself, you can delete the contents from the iCloud Folder (but not the folder itself). Do the same with the Documents folder on your MacBook Air.
3. All the files and folders deleted, will be in the Trash and still taking up space. It will take time for the MacBook Air to actually delete and clear the space; but when it is done, you should have ~60GB or more available.
4. Download Dropbox on your iMac and MacBook Air and setup as per above.
5. Let your MacBook Air synch the Dropbox files.

That said, keeping multiple Macs in synch takes initial planning and that's not always straightforward.

Now, you can also use iCloud fully instead of Dropbox, just delete the contents within the Documents folder (as per above, just don't delete the Documents folder) and determine what the dark grey space contents are on the MacBook Air.

Good luck and post back if you've further questions.

Cheers,

Anthony