Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's look at new iCloud storage options in Mac OS Sierra.
Let's take a look at how, in Mac OS Sierra, it's expanded how you can use iCloud Drive
to include the documents and desktop folders and you have lots of different options for
managing your files.
This is particularly useful for someone on a MacBook and you have limited hard drive
space but you may have a lot of files.
If you go into System Preferences and you look under iCloud you will see that you've
got the option now to add Desktop and Documents to your iCloud Drive.
Here under iCloud Drive, I have that turned on and previously that would just give me
an iCloud Drive folder which then, of course, is synced across all my devices.
But now under Options I can go in and turn on Desktop & Documents Folder.
When I do that what happens is that the Desktop & Documents folder move.
If you look here in the Finder you can see under Favorites my Desktop & Documents folder
actually moved under iCloud next to iCloud Drive.
So instead of being folders under iCloud Drive they're actually separate unto themselves
but they are also in here so you have two different ways to get to them.
My Documents folder is just like it was before.
It actually moves everything automatically and of course since I don't have many files
they're all here on my local Mac.
So what this is actually doing is very similar if you've used Dropbox in the past.
It actually synced all these files to iCloud and then any other Macs I have that have this
turned on their Documents folder would look identical to this one.
Anything I change on one Mac would then change on the other.
So I have one Documents folder for all my Macs.
Now does this mean you have to choose all or nothing?
Either everything is in iCloud or nothing is in iCloud.
Well, not really because the Desktop & Documents folder are special folders that you can do
this with.
However, you can create other folders in your Home folder here, and I've actually created
a Documents 2 folder and it's not going to be stored in iCloud Drive.
Other things like say my Movies folder is not going to be there either.
So if I'm working on videos and they are stored in the Movies folder then they would just
be in the local drive and not take up iCloud Drive space.
So you have the option there if you use Desktop & Documents in iCloud to still sort stuff
completely locally and then use the Desktop & Documents to be your iCloud storage.
Or you cannot have this option turned on at all and your Documents and Desktop folders
are local but you still have the iCloud Drive folder which would have stuff stored in iCloud.
So you have several different ways to handle this depending upon how much you want to use
iCloud.
Now this is definitely not for everybody.
A lot of people like to have complete control over where their files are at all times.
Other people may be in situations where they don't have great internet connectivity.
But for those of us who have high speed internet all the time, are used to using Cloud services
like Dropbox and have been using iCloud Drive since it came out this is a great option for
not only would Documents and Desktop be synced between our Macs but it will be in the Cloud
as well so it will be more secure in that we won't be as susceptible to things like
hard drive failures or getting a laptop stolen and things like that.
Another benefit to using this, of course, is that iCloud Drive is available in iOS so
you can be on your iPad and then you can go into your iCloud Drive folder and there's
Desktop and Documents and you don't have to think about it.
You can simple go into it and there are all your desktop files or your documents files
whereas other Cloud solutions you may have to make sure you put that file in the Cloud
Drive before you know need it later on when you are actually out of the office or away
from home.