iCloud Drive provides you different features to store and back-up data from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and even Windows PC. While you may find it quite simple to set up iCloud on your iPhone and iPad, the process is slightly different on a Mac. So we have made a detailed guide on how to sync your Mac Desktop and Documents folder to iCloud. Here is how.
Why You need To Sync Your Desktop and Documents Folder
Syncing your devices’ data to the iCloud, in general, will benefit you in many ways. If anything goes wrong with your iPhone, iPad, Mac, you can restore your data from your iCloud back-up. And syncing the desktop and documents serving the same purpose. However, apart from being a backup, this helps you to free up your Mac storage as well as allows you to access your Mac documents across multiple devices.
How This Feature Works
When you set up your Mac to sync the Desktop and Documents folders with iCloud, everything you have in that folder will be uploaded to your iCloud Drive account
After your Desktop and Documents folders are uploaded to iCloud, everything looks the same on your Mac. However, now you can access your files from other devices like iPhone or iPad. If you make any changes to these files on one device, they will automatically sync with iCloud and appear on your other devices as well.
How To Sync Desktop And Documents Folders on iCloud
In order to sync your Mac Desktop and Documents folders with your iCloud, you will need to enable this feature under iCloud Drive settings in your System Preferences.
Here’s how:
- On your Mac, open the Apple menu and go to System Preferences.
- Click Apple ID, then select iCloud from the sidebar.
- Enable iCloud Drive
- Click Options next to iCloud Drive Menu
- Turn on Desktop & Documents Folders.
- Click Done.
The syncing process may take a long time depends on the size of your files. You can check the progress by opening Finder and looking at the loading circle next to iCloud Drive in the sidebar.
Turn off Desktop and Documents Syncing
To turn off this feature, simply go through the above steps until you reach the step 4. Now just deselect Desktop & Documents Folders and click Done to disable it. After that, your files still stay in iCloud Drive. A new Desktop and Documents folder will be created on your Mac in the Home folder. You can download all the files to your Mac, or select all of them and drag them to your desired location.
How to Access Your Files From Other Devices
With the Files app in iOS 11 or later, You can access and edit your files directly from your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
In the case that you are using another Mac or a Windows PC, you can sign in to iCloud.com to access your Desktop and Documents folders.
There you go, now you have our guide on how to how to sync your Mac Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud. If you have any question, let us know in the comments!
