See the status of Documents in iCloud

In this video, we’re going to look at the different icons you’ll find, or you’ll see, when you’re working with a file folder in iCloud. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s open up a new Finder window. I go down to my Finder here, click on it, and I have a new Finder window. The first icon that you may see here is next to iCloud Drive. It’s on the right. You’re going to see that it looks like a pie chart. This is the progress of all of the uploads and downloads that iCloud is doing. So if you’re uploading a file to iCloud or downloading a file to iCloud, this is where you can easily see the progress of all of your files that are being uploaded and downloaded. When you click on it, you can get more information. You’re going to see that it is uploading 3.97 gigabytes. It’s also uploading 11 items. I’m going to close this window, and now we’re just back to our simple pie chart. So, if you ever want to see the progress of your iCloud or files moving back and forth between iCloud, you just have to look for this pie chart here.

Now you’re going to find a few other icons. I’m going to click on my iCloud Drive here. And if we go over to the right here, you’re going to see we have these icons here. It looks like a cloud with an arrow pointing down. These files and folders are in iCloud, but they are not on your Mac. So that’s what this is indicating. If you were to disconnect from the network, you would not be able to open up these files here because they’re an iCloud, but they are not on your Mac. To download them to your Mac, all you have to do is just click on it. So I’m going to click on this file here, and it downloaded it to my Mac. Let’s go to the next one here. You’re going to see it says In iCloud, it is not on my Mac. I click on it. We can see the little pie chart there, and now it is on my Mac. It’s also in iCloud.

When you do not see any icon here, that means it’s in both places. It’s in iCloud, and it’s on your Mac. Now, what about a file that is on your Mac but not in iCloud? Well, if we go down to the bottom here, you’re going to see that we have a cloud with an exclamation point. This indicates that the file is on your Mac but not in iCloud. Now the reason why it has an exclamation point is that I’m out of space. I’m out of space in iCloud. So that’s why it does not move in it up to iCloud. If you have an arrow pointing up, that means you have enough space, but it just isn’t an iCloud yet. So it’s going to be locally on your Mac, but it is not going to be an iCloud.

The best-case scenario is to have no icons at all. Again, this represents that the file is an iCloud, and it’s on your Mac. So if you see a file with an arrow pointing down, it’s in iCloud, not on your Mac. You’re not going to be able to open it up if you are not on the network. If you see a cloud with an arrow pointing up, it means it’s on your Mac, but not an iCloud. And then if you see an exclamation point, it means that you’re out of space or there’s an error. To see what the error is, all you have to do is just move your cursor over the top of it; you’re going to see mine says out of space, so it cannot put that file there. I’d have to purchase more space in iCloud to put that file there.

So that’s what the different icons represent when we’re looking at our files and folders in iCloud.