How to get iCloud Drive to mirror Documents folder?

[silvetti]

Sorry for the delayed response. I was very nervous about the recent issues with iCloud Drive docs being erased when wiping an iDevice. So I held off trying to do too much of anything. In the interim I did three things:

-copied everything from iCloud Drive to a thumb drive (do this monthly)
-copied everything from iCloud Drive to dropbox (so the latter is now used for backup rather than access)
-copied everything from iCloud Drive to a local drive, which is now also part of my Time Machine backups

Now that iCloud Drive is baked into the iWork apps I'll probably just leave this system in place.

You don't have any other "documents" except for Pages, Numbers and Keynote files ?

How did you organize, let's say pdf's ?

I'm curious about this as I'm looking for a implementation solution as well.

 

[anthonymoody]

You don't have any other "documents" except for Pages, Numbers and Keynote files ?

How did you organize, let's say pdf's ?

I'm curious about this as I'm looking for a implementation solution as well.

Oh, no. I have zillions of files of all kinds. I have a long-standing system of nested folders organizing everything by type/category as they should be (IMO) rather than file type. E.g. the "2013 Taxes" folder contains spreadsheets, PDFs, Word docs, etc.

That entire folder structure still exists, but is now in my iCloud Drive. If I put say a Pages document in that folder, it exists in that folder AND has an alias link to it in the Pages folder as well, automatically as far as I can tell. Does that make sense?

 

[silvetti]

Oh, no. I have zillions of files of all kinds. I have a long-standing system of nested folders organizing everything by type/category as they should be (IMO) rather than file type. E.g. the "2013 Taxes" folder contains spreadsheets, PDFs, Word docs, etc.

That entire folder structure still exists, but is now in my iCloud Drive. If I put say a Pages document in that folder, it exists in that folder AND has an alias link to it in the Pages folder as well, automatically as far as I can tell. Does that make sense?

Ahh, I didn't know that it would create a "link" from the folder to the Pages app folder. Nice!

 

[arni]

Ahh, I didn't know that it would create a "link" from the folder to the Pages app folder. Nice!

Well for me that doesn't really work. For some reason, numbers on iPad or iPhone doesn't seem to be able to access the linked file. Anybody has the same problem?

 

[anthonymoody]

Ahh, I didn't know that it would create a "link" from the folder to the Pages app folder. Nice!

Well for me that doesn't really work. For some reason, numbers on iPad or iPhone doesn't seem to be able to access the linked file. Anybody has the same problem?

When I first tried, it took a while. First, a file icon appeared in Numbers but I couldn't open it. I set things aside and just checked now and now I can open that file in Numbers. So maybe it was taking some time to index things, the way Spotlight has to? Or something like that...

EDIT: I tried just now with a document I hadn't tried earlier. It took a second or two at first but I am able to open it no problem now.

 

[aRKade1969]

With Dropbox you could create a symlink to the Documents folder with this Terminal command and get the behavior you described.

ln -s ~/Documents ~/Dropbox/Documents

So I am wondering if this would do the same with iCloud Drive (assuming I have the path correct)?

ln -s ~/Documents ~/iCloud\ Drive/Documents

It appears the full path to iCloud Drive is ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/ so you could potentially use the command

ln -s ~/Documents ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents

assuming you have a 'Documents' folder your iCloud Drive directory

 

[jaccrock]

Does the ln -s still work on Yosemite? I am having an issue getting local directories to "mirror" to icloud drive.

 

[FishyD]

Does the ln -s still work on Yosemite? I am having an issue getting local directories to "mirror" to icloud drive.

The original file must reside in iCloud Drive. You can then symlink from that file/folder to your documents folder. It will not work the other way around (original in documents linked to Drive). This is unfortunate because like many here, I would like to mirror iCloud drive and my documents folder with a Time Machine backup of my documents. If you symlink from iCloud Drive to Documents, your documents will not be backed up by Time Machine as the files stored locally on your machine are only symlinks to iCloud Drive.

 

[dotard]

If I understand you correctly you want to have the documents folder update, when you update something on your iCloud Drive? I get that but why not just store your documents folder exclusively in the iCloud drive folder? Any time you needed to you could move the documented to and from the cloud, I get what you are asking just curious why you wouldn't? Not trying to be an ass maybe you have thought of something I haven't considered. I upgraded, and moved everything to the cloud, I no longer have the files on my computer. It works for me because I have a MBP retina with 256gig, and my cloud drive is now 1TB so essentially I save HD space for programs, and use the cloud for storage. I realize that won't work for everyone just worried maybe I didn't think of something lol.

I too did not realize the files would disappear from my mac. I thought the iCloud was just going to be a backup. The reason I want the files to stay in the computer is that my internet connection fails several times a week and I might want work on something or when I'm traveling and don't have internet. How do I get things back?

 

[Weaselboy]

I too did not realize the files would disappear from my mac. I thought the iCloud was just going to be a backup. The reason I want the files to stay in the computer is that my internet connection fails several times a week and I might want work on something or when I'm traveling and don't have internet. How do I get things back?

If you uncheck that optimize box at the bottom, everything will be stored on your Mac (assuming you have enough room).