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Recover documents from iCloud Drive
Q I’m trying to keep my documents both locally on my Mac and copied to iCloud Drive, so I turned on Desktop & Documents in Sonoma. Everything has ended up in iCloud, and it’s no longer on my Mac. What have I done wrong?
by NICK COOK
AiCloud Drive has two fundamental controls: Optimise Mac Storage in iCloud settings, and Desktop & Documents Folders, accessed by clicking iCloud Drive in Apps Using iCloud there. You also need ‘Sync this Mac’ enabled to allow these to work properly.
With the Optimise Mac Storage option turned off, your Mac contains an identical copy of everything you put in iCloud Drive, and can’t remove or evict files so that they’re only stored remotely. With it turned on, both you and macOS can decide to evict local files by removing the data from them, so it has to be downloaded again before they can be used. That frees up storage on your Mac, but evicted files can’t then be backed up or searched as a result.