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Icloud sync folder12/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, my home Internet connection is through satellite, so I see these sorts of errors all the time and so I largely ignored them. Most of the error warnings said little more than there was a "Connection Error" or a "Timeout". They are also designed to deal with the reality that sometimes you may not have a network connection, or that network connect may not be very good. Here again, the good news and bad news is that most of these apps are designed to do as much as they can in the background, as transparently as possible. ![]() Other iCloud-enabled apps on my iPad or iPhone occasionally complained about not being able to save or retrieve data from iCloud. (Note: I believe the technical term for this is Confirmation Bias.) Instead I brushed it off as "proof" that iCloud wasn't to be trusted. Unfortunately, because the loss wasn't that big of a deal, I didn't stop to think about it, or try to figure out what had happened. Fortunately it wasn't all that crucial, so its loss wasn't that big of a deal. I launched an iCloud-enabled 3rd party app on my iPhone, and all of the data was gone. Looking at this all in hindsight, the problem seems obvious, but as I experienced it, the following things seemed like a series of seemingly unrelated events. I used (and continue to use) Dropbox whenever possible, so I was only using iCloud if Dropbox wasn't available. One important thing to realize is that when this whole story started (back in June) there were some iCloud-enabled apps, but there were not a lot of them, at least not a lot of them that I was using. ![]() The file saved, so I assumed that everything was fine, and went on my merry way. Then I launched some iCloud-enabled app on my Mac and saved a document to iCloud. I went into Terminal.app and moved ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ to ~/Dropbox/Library/Mobile Documents/ and then created a link from ~/Dropbox/Library/Mobile Documents/ to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/. Second, it is important to be able to discuss specifics. ![]() I am telling you this for several reasons. Your iCloud documents are saved in ~/Library/Mobile Documents. If you somehow started reading this article in the middle, let me repeat: Do not move your iCloud folder. "Well, I want to have on Dropbox, but it's over here, and my Dropbox folder is over there, so I'll just move the folder and then link it back to its original spot. Now, in my defense, the method that I was attempting is one which many geeks/nerds/tinkerers have used with Dropbox. "But," I thought, "I'm going to be clever about it." However, more and more apps were starting to use iCloud, so I decided that I would start using it. Unlike Dropbox, there is no way to access my files from the web, nor is there a 30-day revision history. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." - UnknownĪ few months ago when I first started using iCloud for documents, I didn't trust it. You should not read this story as an indictment of Apple and/or iCloud (nor Dropbox). It happened because of something I did, not realizing the consequences. Learn from my mistake.īefore I begin, I want to make a few things very clear: 1) This is not something which could have happened accidentally. I'm going to share my story of something I did, so that others might avoid this same situation. This is a cautionary tale for the geeks and the tinkerers in the audience. Consider it the digital equivalent of a hand-grenade which has had the pin pulled and which is resting safely on its handle." - Me The moral of the story that I am about to tell is that Apple's advice about the SyncServices folder also applies to your iCloud documents. "As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder.' - Apple ![]()
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