I don't understand iCloud Drive after coming from Dropbox

appledappleappledapple
Posted:
in iCloud
Dropbox recently increased their price and raised the lowest tier to 2TB. I don't need that. I need like 500MB. Anyhoo, I transferred everything to iCloud Drive. I was under the impression that the option for keeping files and low res images on the computer and the rest in the cloud would help. Alas, I went from 150GB free hard drive space to 6GB. HELP!! I don't know what I did wrong or what I misunderstood.
Toppole

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    appledappleappledapple Posts: 60member
    500 GB...
  • Reply 2 of 6
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,322member
    Check your iCloud preferences on the machine.
    Preference->iCloud->iCloud Drive Manage.
    There is a button "optomise storage" at the bottom when ticked will clear out older files to make space on the machine. 
  • Reply 3 of 6
    appledappleappledapple Posts: 60member
    mattinoz said:
    Check your iCloud preferences on the machine.
    Preference->iCloud->iCloud Drive Manage.
    There is a button "optomise storage" at the bottom when ticked will clear out older files to make space on the machine. 
    Thank you. Yes, I’ve done this but it doesn’t seem to work properly or I’m not doing something right. All files are still on my MacBook Air hard drive. 
  • Reply 4 of 6
    BigMcGuireBigMcGuire Posts: 6member
    Probably too late but ... iCloud does not have a selective sync feature meaning whatever is in iCloud is on your computer. Yes, there is an optimize storage option which is supposed to intelligently keep your local disk space free while only having pointers to iCloud files on your computer.

    All your files will still be there, the size will just be near 0 kb, and when you want them, it'll download them from iCloud.

    Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive all have the ability to have something in the cloud but not locally. iCloud is a syncing device and does not have selective sync.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    macgizmomacgizmo Posts: 102member
    As BigMcGuire pointed out, iCloud is NOT a backup service, or a cloud storage drive. It's a SYNC service. You save absolutely no space with it.

    You can get lots of storage with MS... and not sure what Google offers—but Apple is not the service you want to use to save local storage space, IMO. The "optimize storage" feature of iCloud is somewhat of a joke and offers little-to-no control or customization.

    The only thing I can think of in your situation is that you COPIED the files to iCloud Drive instead of MOVING them to it. This would explain having less storage space than you had before using iCloud Drive.
    edited March 2020
  • Reply 6 of 6
    meterestnzmeterestnz Posts: 73member
    Suggest you have a look at the "Take Control Book on iCloud for all your info needs on iCloud services. Its an ebook previously published by TidBits, one of the first Mac newsletters to be published. Great resources with an average cost of about $15US.

    https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/icloud/
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