Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's take a close look at iCloud Drive.
Now previously you may have stored all of your files in the Documents folder.
In your User folder and the Documents folder you can create any kind of hierarchy of different
folders with project names and put any type of file you want in there.
That's kind of where your documents lived.
That is still there and still available.
But another option is to use iCloud Drive now for the same sort of thing.
If you have already been using iCloud Drive, say with iOS 8, then you will probably notice
folders here for things like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
These are the classic iCloud applications that have been using iCloud documents for
a long time.
What we haven't seen up until now is the ability to look in the Finder to see what is inside
these folders.
So I can see here what is in my Pages folder.
This is equivalent to what I would see if I was looking in Pages in iOS 8 and just going
to open a document there.
I would see those same files there.
So this is the Pages document's area for iCloud.
Now we can see it with iCloud Drive and the same for any other iCloud documents application
whether it is Numbers, Keynote, or some third party app.
You are also going to see apps like TextEdit that use iCloud but there is no iOS 8 equivalent.
There is no TextEdit app on iOS 8.
So this is only really for sharing between Macs.
If I were to use TextEdit to open a document in another Mac, say my laptop, then I would
be able to see the same files that are in here in the TextEdit space.
But in addition to that with iCloud Drive I can also create my own folders like I have
here or just put files here at the main level.
So really use it just like the Documents folder and put my own set of folders here and put
any file I want into them.
I can put images into them.
I can put files that don't have a supporting iCloud app like some design documents or things
like that where they don't fit Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.
I can put Microsoft word documents in here if I wanted to.
Your iCloud Drive documents stay in sync with your other Macs.
So, for instance, here I'm looking at my desktop Mac and I've got the iCloud Drive folder open.
I've got Screen Share here showing my laptop, my MacBook Air which is sitting next to it.
You can see I've got that open also to show iCloud Drive.
On my desktop here, my local drive, I've got this Testing.txt file.
So I'm going to drop this test file into iCloud Drive and it will appear here in iCloud Drive
and then if I give it just a few seconds it will also sync over and appear here on the
MacBook Air.
You can see there it is and you can even see a progress bar as it adds it.
So I've got that now added automatically and you can see these two folders, these two iCloud
Drive folders, which are the same folder but this one exists on my local drive and this
one is on another Mac.
They will stay in sync.
All the files are really in three places here.
They are on my local desktop drive, they automatically sync to the iCloud Drive server at Apple,
and then they sync over to any other Macs that I've got that are using the same Apple
ID that does have the same shared iCloud Drive.
Now here you can see my iCloud Drive folder on my Mac.
I'm looking inside the Pages folder here to see what is there.
I've got three files and a subfolder.
Then on the other side of the screen you can see my iPad and I've got Pages open and I
can see the same documents in there just on the Documents screen.
If I were to add a new one you would see it appear, copied from one to the other.
So let's add one here on the iPad.
I'll just create a blank one, put test, and then I will just name it test2.
Then I'll go back to the Documents screen and you can see test2 is there and if I wait
I'll see that test2 will now go over here.
It says updating one document and it's sending it to the iCloud server and then once it is
in the iCloud server my Mac will recognize that there is a new file there and will update
it here.
You can see it is here.
There is a little symbol there saying it is not yet downloaded but if I just wait a few
more seconds the symbol will disappear as it syncs to the Mac.
Now I've got this file in both places.
Now what about outside of the Pages folder.
Say I've stored something else on iCloud Drive but not in the Pages folder.
I've put it in this folder I created called Project A and its a Pages document.
Well, I can open that by going and hitting the plus button at the upper left in Pages
there, hitting iCloud and now I can see the entire iCloud Drive including the Project
A folder.
Select that, select that document there, and it will open up that document but not only
that it is going to put a link to it here in the Pages folder here, and you can see
it adds In iCloud Drive after it.
So now when I go back to document you can see that my doc is now listed there.
It has got a different color to the name but it kind of makes it easy to find Pages documents
that aren't stored inside the Pages folder.
You can almost ignore the Pages folder, if you want, and just create your own subfolders
and then get these documents as you need them.
Now another way you can access your files in iCloud Drive is using iCloud.com.
You go to iCloud.com, log in with your Apple ID and there is an iCloud Drive icon there.
You can go in there and you can see not only your Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and other
app's folders there but you can also go into your custom made folders and see those files
there.
You can even open up these files here in the actual app's in the web side of things.
So I can use the Pages web version to open up that Pages document there.
Now another thing you can use iCloud Drive for is for supporting documents.
So, for instance, say I put an image here in my Project A folder on my iCloud Drive.
Then on my iPad I want to import an image into a document.
So let's go to the test2 document here and put the cursor right there.
I'm going to then hit the plus symbol.
I can see my photo albums here where I can insert an image and that is as before.
But I've got Insert From now.
Tap Insert From and I can see my iCloud files.
I can go to Project A. Sure enough there is the image there.
I can select that one and it will import in.
There you go.
So without adding an image to my Camera Roll or bringing it into Photos at all I can actually
bring it in here to Pages just using iCloud Drive.
Kind of like you would do it on a Mac if you were using Pages.
You can just bring the file in very easily.
You can also use iCloud Drive to export files.
So, for instance, say I'm in this Pages document here and I want to share it.
I'm going to say Send a Copy.
It is going to ask me to choose a Format.
So say I want to send it in pdf format.
I can now choose how to send.
You can see I have the Send to little folder with an arrow there.
I can select a folder in iCloud Drive and hit Export to this location.
Now it will send it out and I will see it actually appear on my Mac after a few seconds.
There it is.