iCreate - UK (2019-09)

iCloud Control

User and special folders

Only use iCloud Control on your own

files and folders on iCloud. Let Apple

manage its own apps like Pages,

Numbers, TextEdit and so on. If you go

to the iCloud folder in Terminal and list

the items there with the ‘ls’ command,

Apple system folders are missing.

That’s because you should not change

them in Terminal or iCloud Control.

Knowledge base

Manage iCloud files

with iCloud Control

W

ithiCloudplansofferingupto2TBof space,

storingyourfilesonline,suchasdocuments,

photos,moviesandmore,is nota problem.

Filesarenotonlystoredonline,theycanalsobeon

theMac’sdrive,providingthereis sufficientspacefor

them.macOSautomaticallymanageswhetherfilesare

onlineoroffline,butforpeoplethatwantmorecontrol

over the location of files or for people that want to free

up drive space on the Mac, iCloud Control (http://bit.

ly/30zknHS) is a free utility that enables you to choose.

ThisFinderextensioncanremovelocalcopiesof

files,whichreducesthespacerequiredontheMac’s

drive to almost zero. We also see how to access iCloud

from Terminal. It’s geeky, but interesting and useful for

expert Mac users.

Choose whether iCloud files are online or on the Mac

with a free tool and access iCloud from Terminal

15

Time needed

Developer

Robbert Brandsma

Difficulty

The free iCloud Control extension provides deeper cloud storage

management tools to help you free up space

Control iCloud

Manage iCloud files and folders

iCloud

local storage

Copies of iCloud files and

folders can be on the Mac’s

drive, but where are they? This

long and strange path is the

location. Change to it with ‘cd’

and use ‘ls’ to list the contents.

File status icons

This column in Finder shows

an icon to indicate whether a

file or folder is both online and

on the Mac’s drive (a cloud

icon) or only stored online

(cloud with a down arrow).

Save drive space

How much drive space is

saved by removing local

files? Select a folder and

press Cmd+I to open the info

window. This folder is 3.34GB,

but uses only 135KB on disk.

Choose the location

iCloud files can be stored

locally on the Mac’s drive as

well as online. Use iCloud

Controlto remove the local

copyto freespace or download

filesif theyareneeded.