I had known that, but forgot it. (The time I need to forget something is decreasing at what, to me, is an alarming rate.)
I never knew that (or at least forgot that I had known it). Thanks. Is the trailing slash needed? It seems like open . should work. (Answer: the trailing slash is not needed. Also, if the Finder has an existing window open on the shell’s working directory, then the open command will move that window to the front.)
I still use Go2Shell to open Terminal in the currently open folder. (It’s groaning a bit with recent macOS versions, but still works.) And yes, where it goes is ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs.
But for reasons mysterious to me, the shell doesn’t see all the iCloud subfolders in that directory. All the same, if you touch junk right there, the new empty file appears in the Finder window. It has the little cloud icon, which soon goes away.
Again, I know far too little about what’s going on to be a reliable source, but I hope it works for you. Sadly – well, sort of – I’ve never needed to fix the problem on my iPad. I’m hoping that when macOS converges with iOS and iPadOS, we’ll get the intersection of all the bugs instead of the union.
I have a fairly low bandwidth connection. When I tried backing up to iCloud, it immediately consumed the entire uplink, and the rest of the household’s internet connection came to a screeching halt.
This summer we should get ‘fiber to the house’ to replace our twinned DSL (different provider), but for now I’ve given up on cloud backups.
Indeed. Like all of us, I have experimented with these different services while trying to avoid collecting more and more paid subscription services - also to save me from wondering where to find things.
So, I have consolidated completely with Dropbox (for the moment), firstly because it works and secondly for its power to selectively download specified files and folders to different machines and devices. Its integration with Finder is faultless. It works as I expect on iOs. It’s solid for collaborative file sharing. I don’t use any of the fancy new features.
Google Drive is useful online, brilliant for sharing and integrating Forms and other Google things, ideal for small groups and project management. But a nightmare if you install the MacOS desktop/sync app as it constantly tries to take over every time you insert a memory card or external device, offering upload all your photos etc. It’s like Google can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to use Google for everything and is a bit offended.
Apple iCloud I use to a very small extent and without problem, but am still suspicious of the way (from iOs) that it like to file everything away by app, sometimes invisibly. I have a couple of applications where the ‘master’ is held out of sight in the Cloud. Seems to work, but it worries the hell out of me.
I’m guessing you mean complementary rather than complimentary?
Surprised the article made no reference to Nextcloud - the leading open source cloud platform. I’m a fan and have been using Nextcloud for shared cloud storage, online collaborative document editing, and a whole lot more, for some years.
I heard back from Sync on this. They said you can have as many devices configured as you want, but that only five devices will be syncing at any one time. Once one of the devices finishes updating, then another, sixth, device can sync as well. Their online FAQ doesn’t mention this: it just mentions that you can have up to five active devices.
It puts an ejectable Google Drive item in the Favorites section of Finder window sidebars and offers a choice between streaming and mirroring files, with the mirrored option’s local folder appearing in your home folder.
I agree with everything noted about the updated Google Drive (GD). The user experience is now so clunky. I have both the ‘sidebar item’ that points directly to the GD folder and the ejectable GD item in my sidebar Favorites. So what happens if I eject the GD? Will both ‘sidebar items’ also go away? Will it stop GD from syncing?
Also noticed that on the ‘ejectable’ GD, the link to the GD folder is a shortcut vs. displaying everything on your drive or a direct link to the folder. This seems different than the way it used to be and also when comparing to Dropbox and other cloud services with Desktop integrations.
Yes, of course. Thank you. Fixed.
Well there’s also the excellent Syncthing that has been lauded by many long time Mac journalists. But I suppose (just guessing) the idea for this piece was to review broader and commercial syncing services geared at exchanging items with the rest of the world. If you’re looking for a sync service for your own devices, that’s a different ballgame where you don’t necessarily need to use somebody else’s cloud.
Certainly the focus appears to be on larger scale commercial offerings. Which isn’t to say that I couldn’t buy Nextcloud-powered services from a commercial provider. And in day to day use there seems to be not much to choose between it and some of these big brand services.
the Synching looks potentially interesting - thanks for the pointer.
Syncthing is great; I’ve been using it for years now to sync personal stuff between machines. No iOS or iPadOS options, though. (Unless something changed recently.)
As I noted, there are a vast number of other cloud storage options, so I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. :-) Good to hear that Nextcloud is worthwhile.
It does raise so many questions. A few answers:
If you eject the drive, that logs you out of Google Drive. A sidebar item remains, but clicking it produces two error dialogs.
If you then go to the Google Drive menu bar icon, you can log in again. That works, and brings back the functional sidebar items, but this error also appeared. No clue.
If you drag the ejectable Google Drive item out of your sidebar, it comes back after a restart. I didn’t try the other one, but I’d guess it wouldn’t.
You can drag the ejectable item down to your Locations area in the sidebar. I didn’t test if it stays there after a restart.
On a somewhat different topic, if you upgrade to the Dropbox beta for Monterey, remember that it will move your files, which could take some time. And it broke my Keyboard Maestro macro syncing, which I should have expected.
Yikes. What a mess!
Could you clarify what you mean by your last point about Dropbox and the “Beta” version for Monterey? When you say it will ‘move your files’…what do you mean? Dropbox is critical to some of my workstreams. I currently have v. 141.4.3299 installed on my iMac, which is running macOS Monterey 12.1
Thanks!
Right now, your Dropbox folder is in your home folder. When you install the beta (142.3.4155), the Dropbox folder will move to ~/Library/CloudStorage. Anything that’s looking for a file in the old Dropbox path will fail until you point it to the new location. For the most part, that won’t be a problem, but some apps store preferences or support files in Dropbox and they’ll be unhappy until you fix it.
Ah, got it. So may see some ‘barfing’ 
with apps like IFTTT and similar until details are updated. OK, makes sense.
Just for my own curiosity:
Asking because I just checked my ~/Library directory and am not seeing a “CloudStorage” folder.
Apologies for all the questions. 
I believe the Cloud Storage directory is created when you run either OneDrive or the next release of Dropbox. I have it now and believe it was created when I installed and started running a new release on OneDrive. Starting in Monterey 12.3, Apple is disallowing the kernel extension(s) used by OneDrive and requiring them to use an Apple-provided substitute method. Apple apparently made the Apple-supplied method in 2019, announcing that its use would be required in the future.
The OneDrive implementation initially removed all files from the computer-side OneDrive. You could get them back using a two-step process, but they were stored in a ‘secret’ cache with the Cloud Storage files only being aliases or hard links to the actual files. This process caused my Carbon Copy Cloner to throw errors when it attempted to deal with them; so I removed the Cloud Storage->OneDrive folder from my Clone task. I hope that the Dropbox implementation is cleaner.
Apple’s new File Provider extension seems to mean that Dropbox and OneDrive will be seen as external drives. Which leads to some funny dialogs.
My Dropbox folders on macOS desktops are on an external drives, except on my MacBook Pro used for travel and macOS beta testing. Every time a system update (macOS and/or hardware) that requires re-installing Dropbox, Dropbox assumes that their choice of Dropbox folder location is correct as well as insisting non-local storage is the also correct. This even if the previous preferences still exist. So before letting Dropbox loose to sync, I set the dropbox folder location to one that has more space available than has my boot drive, carefully verify that ‘New files default’: is ‘Available offline’, and verify that ‘Select folders’ represents my choice for the particular machine. Selected folders are everything on desktops and a small subset on MacBooks.
Every year or so, I survey the results to assure myself that the Cloud folders and the local folders contents match, resetting online-only bits as required. In all, I have found that I still trust Dropbox more than I trust iCloud. This is partly from experience helping clients recover from naively “optimizing” their storage and finding they cannot use iCloud mail until Jim has fixed it. Also, by using Dropbox as just a Dropbox and not a ‘jack of all trades’ if find both reliability and maintainability improved.
