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iCloud Storage Options

Avatar Rick Churchill
My new MBP has started saving everything to the cloud without any input from me. I only found out when I wanted to email a document on which I had been working.
Under System Settings>Storage> there is a Store in iCloud icon with a Store in iCloud button.
On clicking it I get a panel where it helpfully says “Choose what you would like to store in iCloud.” Then there are just 3 categories: Desktop and Documents, Photos and Mail.
I deselected Desktop.. and Photos but after clicking either of the two remaining buttons “Cancel” and “Store in iCloud” and then reopening the panel, the 3 sliders were still green and selected.

Now the email selection has disappeared altogether and when I deselect the other two the “Store in iCloud” goes grey leaving the only option to press Cancel but again on opening the panel the sliders are selected and are green.

I would like to view sent and received emails on all my devices which I believe I can do with IMAC without cloud storage and keep my documents on my computer. How do I ensure this happens?

Re: iCloud Storage Options

Avatar Tony Still
I see what you mean and mine too opens with all the sliders on/green. In my case, curiously, I don't have mail listed.

It looks like a bug to me. There is no way that my Documents/Desktop are being stored in iCloud and I have never turned it on (and they would be charging me by now if it was working).

They may just have forgotten that each switch is a display control (of current state) when the dialogue opens, only becoming a request to configure when you close it again. Or it could be the still visibly unfinished 'Marzipan' layer that supports running iPad software on macOS (and that has gifted us with some pretty mediocre UIs so far).

Re: iCloud Storage Options

Avatar Rick Churchill
Thanks Tony I thought it was just me. My mail selection disappeared when I selected it as a requirement to be stored on iCloud. I have deleted any files stored in the cloud and hopefully they will not reappear there later.

Re: iCloud Storage Options

Avatar Andrew Kemp
It is a confusing interface, but I think the key is that 'Store in iCloud...' button is in the 'Recommendations' section of the 'Storage' pane -- in other words, those switches are not showing the current state of your iCloud configuration, but instead Apple's recommended changes, which you can accept by pressing the 'Store in iCloud' button (instead of 'Cancel') in the panel.

The whole 'Recommendations' section appears to consist of recommendations focused on freeing up storage space on your Mac (whether by offloading things into iCloud, or by doing things like emptying the bin on a schedule).

I think the reason that we don't have 'Mail' listed in the iCloud recommendations is that we are already using iCloud Mail (i.e. an icloud.com/me.com Apple-hosted email account), so they don't need to recommend it.

I was a little confused as to why I had a 'Photos' recommendation, because I already use iCloud Photo Library. But looking at the text next to the switch, it is suggesting that I switch to the mode where the Mac only has 'optimised' versions of the images, and the full-resolution images exist only in iCloud.

I expect that the 'Store in iCloud...' button would disappear entirely from the 'Recommendations' section once you accept all of its recommendations, but I am not going to try it to find out!

Re: iCloud Storage Options

Avatar Tony Still
Good spot Andrew, I didn't see the word 'Recommendations' and struggled to find it even after reading your post. I stand by my statement that the controls should show the current enabled/not state though: their presence in the dialogue box is surely what tells you that they are the things being recommended.

By coincidence, I was just reading an unrelated item (by Howard Oakley) and he points to another place that these things can be set. Arguably this is more correct for Rick's purposes since it is simply settings, untarnished by any sense of recommendation. That's at:
System Settings > Apple ID >iCloud > iCloud Drive > Options
though that list is hardly intuitive either (no Photos on my machine).

Having found the 'Recommendations' subtitle, I'm now off to search for the 'E&OE'.
 
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