120 MACWORLD DECEMBER 2021
HELPDESK MAC 911phone, tablet, or computer after signing
out (fave.co/3GYmXxt). That includes
Apple Pay, Continuity, and Voice Memos.
If you later sign back into iCloud from
the same device, your operating system
will offer to merge data or replace it. Once
again, choose wisely: iCloud tracks data
fairly carefully, so your newest versions of
each contact, calendar entry, photo, and
other data should be retained in a merge.
But if you’ve made extensive changes on
a logged-out device to items that could be
synced, there’s a potential that some of
them might be overwritten. ■notes. You can choose for each one
whether you want to save or delete.
If you opt to not save the information
on the device, your data remains on
iCloud.com as well as on any other Apple
hardware you own that’s logged into the
same iCloud account, although each
device can be set to sync a different set of
iCloud services.
There’s one exception to that rule.
iCloud Keychain employs device-based
end-to-end encryption across any iPhone,
iPad, or Mac for which you’ve enabled
iCloud Keychain. If you sign out of iCloud
on a device, it can
retain a local copy of
the last synced
version. However, if
you sign out from all
your devices or all but
one, there’s no copy
retained on iCloud.
com: When there
aren’t two or more
devices using iCloud
Keychain, this secure
data isn’t synced
across iCloud.
Apple has tied so
many services you
may rely on to iCloud
that it’s worthwhile to
review its list of what
you can’t access on a
Sign out from iCloud in macOS, and you can retain a local copy—
but you lose access to a huge number of services.