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.
iCloud Drive
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.
It makes a big difference whether an app, file or folder is in the System or Data volume, or maybe somewhere else. Here’s how to tell accurately, rather than according to one of the Finder’s illusions.
How to exclude folders and files from these services, with new problems apparent in macOS Tahoe over exclusions from Time Machine backups.
A complex set of rules with optional flags determines whether any given xattr is preserved when copying, saving, syncing with a cloud service, backing up, and more. Here they are.
What do you do when you discover your Mac’s Data volume has run out of free space? A guide to working with snapshots, iCloud Drive, and other tricks to salvage your Mac. And how to prevent this from happening again.
Updates to Cirrus (iCloud), Revisionist (versions), Spundle (sparse bundles) and T2M2 (Time Machine)
Four updates to popular tools, aimed mainly at compatibility with Tahoe, covering iCloud Drive tests, tools for document versions, creating sparse bundles, and checking your Time Machine backups are working properly.
Although introduced in the same year, versioning and iCloud Drive aren’t integrated. This explains how they work, and how you can transfer versions through iCloud Drive.
Backups don’t include everything. Here are details of those items excluded from Time Machine backups, and why they’re excluded.
The rules for preserving document versions are based on their being associated with the document’s inode number, and on the same volume. Here are the details and a way to preserve them whatever.
The Eclectic Light Company 