For over a decade, cloud services did their own thing. Apple then encouraged them to use a new File Provider framework, and led the way with iCloud Drive.
FileProvider
It now consists of many discrete services. How to test CloudKit’s shared databases, iCloud Drive’s cloud storage, and whether your Mac can install from iCloud.
If you have Optimise Mac Storage enabled, pinning files you want kept locally is a valuable new feature, but has its quirks, and could get your Mac into trouble.
Unless you exclude them from backups, Time Machine will back up all items in iCloud Drive as long as they’re stored locally when the backup is made.
How one of the serious bugs in macOS Sonoma 14.4 came about, why it was so serious, and how Apple released a fix in 7 days of it being reported.
Ever been tempted to turn on this feature, or maybe you use it already? Do you know how it works, and whether it preserves your files fully?
It lets you evict files so their data is only held in iCloud Drive, freeing up local space. But would to get into storage debt as a results?
How local files retain their extended attributes and versions when moved to iCloud Drive, but they’re not available to other Macs. Sparse files and storage economy as well.
Further insights into how iCloud Drive works using a folder of 20 small files. These reveal system limits including chunk size and throttling.
How Sonoma’s new FileProvider mechanism is reflected in log entries for the upload of a test file to iCloud Drive.
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