Clearing space on iCloud

[Jamieji]

I am receiving a message on my iPhone that 49.8 GB of storage out of my 50 GB total has been used. I want to delete files from iCloud, but it seems that they are linked to my hard drive. So if I delete from my iCloud Drive on my computer it disappears from my computer entirely. How do i clear up space in iCloud while retaining the files on my computer? I am using OS 10.13.6. Thanks.

 

[Lunder89]

Is your Documents folder and Desktop synced to iCloud? And do both of these folders contain larger files?
If so, you need to disable this in the iCloud settings on your Mac.

Which can be found in System Preferences.

 

[Jamieji]

Is your Documents folder and Desktop synced to iCloud? And do both of these folders contain larger files?
If so, you need to disable this in the iCloud settings on your Mac.

Which can be found in System Preferences.

Thanks. It appears that iCloud is the primary "hard drive" for the Mac--probably because the new MacBook Airs have so little memory on the computer. I have now unlinked my Documents folder to iCloud and removed my Video folder 23+ GBs from iCloud. This has freed up memory in iCloud. My Documents folder on the hard drive, though, now only has the Video folder in it. The rest of my documents I have to access on my iCloud Drive. Does this sound right to you? Many thanks.

 

[Lunder89]

When you disable Documents and Desktop in iCloud it creates a folder elsewhere with the contents, so I think it sounds right...

I never use this feature, because I use my desktop for projects.