How to use the Finder’s Lock feature, and as the Immutable flag in Terminal. What its effects are, and how well it’s retained. How iCloud Drive can’t cope with it, and how you can use it in your own lightweight versioning system.
iCloud Drive
Soon after introducing iCloud and iCloud Drive, Apple changed the way most metadata was handled to ensure it was synced up to the cloud. Recently this has been reversed, and little metadata is now synced. Was this an accident or intentional? What is the workaround?
A summary of iCloud Drive syncing of attributes, data, extended attributes, document versions (complex), Spotlight index content, and QuickLook previews.
What happens when you move a file with metadata attached in extended attributes to iCloud Drive? Which of those are preserved when you access that file from another Mac?
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.
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.
The Eclectic Light Company 