iCloud How to Use iCloud Drive/storage as an Extension to Physical Disk Storage on a Mac?

[BogiTheTomtom]

Hello,

I'm new to the mac echo system, and would appreciate some help.

When one buys/subscribes to some "Google Drive" cloud storage, one can dump their files there (via the web-client, not the desktop client) without having to have a copy of the same file sitting on their physical computer drive. This effectively extends the storage capacity one has on top of what the computer physical drive capacity might be

I struggle to find a way to do the same thing with iCloud Drive (Files). It seems whatever you put in Apple iCloud Drive/Files, you must have it on your mac physical storage as well. It defeats my purpose of having additional, extended storage on the cloud

Am I missing something here? Is there a way to do this?

Thanks

P.S. Forgot to also ask about whether a solution ; if one exists, would also work when 'Advanced Data Protection' turned 'on'. Thanks again

 

[MrChad]

Conceptually, there is no difference between iCloud Drive and Google's equivalent. You can use iCloud drive as an extension to your local storage as you describe.

Technically speaking, all cloud services "mirror" some of your remote data on local storage, based on file age, usage and other criteria, but you should not worry too much. Unused files will be silently "evicted" and transparently re-downloaded when you access them.

In iCloud, you have the option to always keep a local copy, but it is not mandatory and your files in iCloud can exceed local storage capacity.

An open issue with all such cloud drives is backup. It is not trivial to create or keep a reliable backup on your premises.