January 2022 • Macworld 99- In macOS 10.15 Big Sur and later,
open the Apple ID preference pane,
click Overview, and click Sign Out.
On an Apple TV, go to Settings
Accounts > iCloud and select
Sign Out. After selecting Sign Out
on all devices except an Apple TV,
you’ll be prompted about whether
you want to save local copies of
synced data. Apple provides a full
list (fave.co/3weh2Pu) of potentially
downloaded data types, like photos
and notes. You can choose for each
whether 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 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
that you may rely on to iCloud,Sign out from iCloud in macOS, and you can retain a local
copy. But you lose access to a huge number of services.