Desktop and documents in iCloud broke adobe CC

[Ben J.]

I never used this feature before; having these two folders in icloud to be able to access them across devices. I thought it'd be great, and it looks to be - except, when I try to update anything Adobe on my Mini, it fails with a -46 error on the Creative Cloud update, 'can't access folder'.

I tried everything, web install, download installer, restart, disabled SIP, new user account, always the same error. I now strongly suspect it has to do with my enabling the icloud thing a few days ago. There is an Adobe folder in 'Documents' with lots of stuff, and I can see how the adobe installers are not allowed to get thru the icloud system, with encryption and all.

Just throwing it out there.

I guess I'll have to restore a backup from a few days ago, when the regular Documents folder was in place. I expect that will solve it. But it's pretty convoluted this whole thing.

Not much help when searching. Adobe support has nothing to offer.

(I last updated my adobe stuff only a few weeks ago, without any problems.)

(One more thing; I did update from 13.2.1 to 13.4.1 last week, but I find it hard to believe that would cause a basic corruption like file permission problems.)

 

[Ben J.]

Well, I was wrong. I restored my mac's internal drive to before I started to try out desktop&documents in icloud. And the error with installing Creative Cloud is still preventing me from installing anything Adobe.

I even tried a "Adobe repair tool" which remeoved anything adobe on the mac, still no luck.

I'm now back on a setup that has Lightroom Classic installed and working, I have setup the desktop&documents icloud sync again, I have LRC working, which is most important for me. I'll just leave Adobe CC and Lightroom CC alone.

My current suspicion is that the update from 13.2.1 to 13.4.1 might be the cause of the adobe screw up. But I won't bother with rolling back. As we know, rolling back the protected system volume is a bit more work than restoring the 'data' volume.

 

[Ben J.]

Just to conclude: I never got Desktop&Documents iCloud sync to work. Files and folders would be missing, and shutting it off would not restore them. I tried all I could think of over a couple of days, so I gave up.

It might have been my fault, something I missed, but I think the whole thing seems pretty unintuitive and unreliable. If you have it working, I'm happy for you. I would have loved to have it working too, but I'll just use memory sticks, portable drives, and Google Drive.

I was solidly backed up, so I'm fully restored now.
Still using iCloud for Contacts, Notes, Keychain etc like I was before.

 

[Ben J.]

Update: While I'm still using icloud for apps, contacts, etc, I've completely given up on iCloud Drive. The way I see it, there is no way to use it as a simple storage space. It insists that you conform to it's syncing system. Might suit some, but for me, it's not the way I like to have it, I like to have more control.

So my solution is Google Drive. I have complete manual control over what is there, and what I have access to across devices. I can choose to not have it 'sync' anything.

As for the Adobe Creative Cloud not installing; I found that I don't need it at all. I have Lightroom Classic working fine on my Mini without it, and I found that I can easily share LR collections to my Adobe account, and open them on other devices with regular Lightroom. I'm actually glad that I can do without the Creative crap. Too much top-down control, too little control for me. Like iCloud.

Happy ending.