HELP! iCloud Drive files not showing in Finder

[SW3029]

Hi all,

Is there any way to force a refresh/resync of iCloud Drive documents on macOS?

My issue is: on my iPhone I opened the Files app and moved documents from Browse > On My iPhone to Browse > iCloud Drive so I could get them into the cloud. My iPhone showed they moved successfully (into the iCloud Drive folder) and uploaded just fine. However, the files still do not appear in iCloud Drive in the Finder on my Mac. I'm running macOS Big Sur. It has been over 2 hours and the files are no bigger than 100 MB in total.

I've also confirmed that the files did indeed upload to iCloud, because when I log into www.icloud.com in the Safri browser on my Mac I can see them in my iCloud Drive folder in the browser.

Any thoughts?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Try logging out and back in on your iCloud account.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

A log-out/log-in is somewhat extreme as an initial step - it triggers a variety of "Keep on this Mac?" steps that, depending on your iCloud settings could take a fair amount of time both during the sign-out and then the sign-in. For example, if you're keeping your Documents and/or Desktop folders in iCloud, it will trigger an archive download of both those folders to the Mac.

In the end, maybe it'll be necessary to do that sign-out/sign-in, but for starters try steps that are lower impact.

First, I'd simply check for a good iCloud sign-in on the Mac. Sometimes iCloud appears to be signed in, but something needs to be healed. In Big Sur you would go to System Preferences > Apple ID and select either Name, Phone, Email or Password & Security. If you are prompted to enter a password to access either area, then that may have been the root of your problem - a "good" sign-in will not trigger a password request.

Next question, is the problem isolated to iCloud Drive, or are there other iCloud features that aren't syncing? You can check features like Contacts and Calendars by creating a ntew contact or event on the Mac, and checking to see if it syncs to iCloud.com (since iCloud.com is the "hub" for iCloud, it's a great way to isolate where the communications/syncing failure has occurred). Also, add a new file to iCloud Drive on the Mac to see if it syncs to iCloud.com.

If the issue is isolated to a single feature, then toggling that single feature Off/On is lower impact than taking all of iCloud offline.

 

[mackiee]

Hi all,

Is there any way to force a refresh/resync of iCloud Drive documents on macOS?

My issue is: on my iPhone I opened the Files app and moved documents from Browse > On My iPhone to Browse > iCloud Drive so I could get them into the cloud. My iPhone showed they moved successfully (into the iCloud Drive folder) and uploaded just fine. However, the files still do not appear in iCloud Drive in the Finder on my Mac. I'm running macOS Big Sur. It has been over 2 hours and the files are no bigger than 100 MB in total.

I've also confirmed that the files did indeed upload to iCloud, because when I log into www.icloud.com in the Safri browser on my Mac I can see them in my iCloud Drive folder in the browser.

Any thoughts?

I also have had some syncing problems with iCloud Drive. My Mac mini m1 came preinstalled with Big Sur (obviously) so I did not do any upgrade from Catalina. However, after I updated to 11.0.1 it seemed to stop working. I then checked the setting in System Preferences -> Apple ID -> iCloud and saw that the iCloud Drive checkbox was not active! I have absolutely no idea how that happened but after I re-checked it iCloud Drive seems to work ok (but very slow) again.