hi this is gary with macmost.com today
let's talk about using icloud drive but
forcing some files to be stored locally
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content and course discounts so when you
use icloud drive everything is stored in
one virtual location that's on icloud
drive you see those files on your mac
but they're also stored on apple servers
and then you can see them on all your
other devices but what if you want to
store some files in icloud drive and
some files locally i'm going to show you
three methods including one you
shouldn't use one that may solve all
your problems with no hassle and another
one that allow you to decide which files
are on icloud drive and which files are
not they're just stored locally the
first method i want to show you is
actually the simplest but whether it's
for you depends on what you really want
a lot of times when people ask me how do
i make sure files are stored locally
even though they're on icloud drive what
they really want is their files to be an
icloud drive but to make sure they're
also on their mac at all times so if
they're offline they could access them
in this case all you need to do is go to
system preferences
then click on apple id
make sure you have icloud selected
now at the bottom you should see
optimize mac storage if you have that
turned on that means all of your files
are always on icloud drive they're
always stored on apple servers but files
are only stored on your mac if there's
space and if you recently accessed the
files or your mac predicts that you
might need that file soon so you could
find yourself in a situation where
you're offline and you don't have access
to your files because your mac didn't
store a local version there doesn't
appear to be any difference to you all
your files look like they're there it's
only when you try to open them that it
then tries to access them on icloud
drive but if you have this turned off
like i do then every single file on
icloud drive is also on your mac so you
never have to worry about whether a file
is available online or offline all files
are available whether or not you're
online the downside is you're limited by
the storage on your mac so you could
only have as many files as you have
space on your mac
if you're in a situation where you have
a very small drive say a 256 gig hard
drive on your mac but you have more than
256 gigs of files then you could
certainly store more in icloud drive but
you'll have to use this optimize max
storage feature because your mac simply
can't fit all of those files if you need
to access all your files offline then
you should definitely avoid this problem
by making sure you only buy macs that
have enough internal storage otherwise
you might see something like this here i
am in my documents folder and i see next
to this folder here this icon telling me
that there are items in this folder that
are certainly there on icloud drive but
i don't necessarily have local versions
of them if i look in the folder i can
see the status of each file so if i were
to try to access this file now while i'm
online it would simply download it on
demand i may not even notice a
difference
but if i'm completely offline it has no
way to download it from icloud drive so
trying to open this file won't work but
i could control click right click or two
finger click on the trackpad on the file
and select download now it would
download this file i'm telling icloud
that this file is important to me i want
to make sure i have a local copy and now
i should be good for a while
at some point in the future it may
decide well you didn't really access
that file that often so i'll offload it
but at least for the time being i have
it available i can even select this
folder here
choose download now and now it's going
to download everything in there
so you'll see those little icons go away
and now i have all the stuff available
even if i'm offline
i can also select a file say if it's a
large file control click it and remove
download
so just that one file now is no longer
available i can use that to save space
now what if that's not your situation
what if your situation is you want to
have some files that aren't on icloud
drive at all they're only local to your
mac for instance you may have a folder
where you're storing video projects and
you don't want all that stuff to be
uploaded to icloud drive you just want
it to be local well one method you'll
see a lot is to use dot no sync after a
folder or file name and it tells your
mac not to send this file to icloud
drive icloud drive won't see it at all
now i don't recommend this method the
third method i'm going to show you
that's the one you should be using in
the situation but if you really want to
do it you could take a folder like this
you could put at the end of it dot no
sync
just like that
and now you'll see the icon changes to a
cloud with a line through it that folder
will no longer be an icloud drive
anything you add to it will no longer be
an icloud drive but i recommend not
using this at all it's not really
technically supported it does work
and it can be confusing you could easily
forget why a folder isn't appearing in
icloud drive because you didn't remember
that you added this to it it's not a
good method a much better method is to
simply create a local folder
on your drive for local files you see if
you have in system preferences
under apple id icloud
you have under options desktop and
documents folders turned on then your
documents folder and your desktop folder
are part of icloud drive as a matter of
fact if you look in the regular place
for those by going to your home folder
you won't see
documents and desktop there anymore
they've been removed from here and they
are actually in icloud drive now but
your
home folder is all local files these are
files not an icloud drive so you can
simply create another folder in here
i've created one called local documents
and in here i can put documents that
aren't part of icloud drive at all
they're only on this mac icloud drive
has no idea they even exist this is a
much better solution than no sync just
set up a local documents folder or call
it what you want you can set up a
variety of folders here if you want with
different names anything put in your
home folder is not going to be on icloud
drive i recommend you don't try to
create a folder here called documents
and certainly not one called desktop
because that would be confusing to have
two folders with that name and then it
will be difficult to figure out when
you're saving a file to your documents
folder whether it's the local one in
your home folder or the one on icloud
drive so don't use those names but
certainly something like local documents
make sense you can even use some of the
existing folders like there's a movies
folder here where all of your video data
for things like imovie and final cut pro
would be stored that makes sense because
those files are usually massive and
storing them on icloud drive isn't
always the best idea but you can also
create your own things in movies for
instance if you have a collection of
some video backgrounds that you want to
sometimes use they're too big to store
an icloud drive instead of creating its
own folder you can always create
something under the movies folder
because it kind of makes sense from an
organizational standpoint but any
folders that you create here in your
home folder is going to be local not on
icloud drive and then anything you
create under icloud drive would then be
synced with icloud drive so you have
complete control there there's no reason
to use dot no sync on folders if you
don't have to jump from your documents
folder to your home folder you can just
set up aliases so for instance here if i
have local documents and i don't want to
have to go to a different location to
see those i could drag hold down option
and command and it'll create an alias
and put an alias
inside of my icloud
documents folder now in icloud documents
i see local documents
i jump to the local documents folder
inside of my home folder
it works really well if you use column
view in column view here i am looking at
icloud drive i could go into documents
and then to local documents and it
appears to flow down into this like
local documents is really inside
documents it's not it's an alias this
won't be synced in icloud drive because
it's not really inside the documents
folder it's just an alias going to
another location on your drive so there
are a few alternatives for you if you
just want to make sure all your files
are available locally when you're
offline just turn off the optimize
feature otherwise if you want to create
special folders that are never synced to
icloud drive create them in your home
folder hope you found this useful thanks
for watching
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