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Why does finder hide the Documents and Desktop ...

I am running MacOS Sierra. I am logged in to my iCloud account. I activated the Documents and Desktop option, but I did NOT activate the Optimise Mac Storage option, as I wanted to make sure that all my files would remain available locally, juste in case I would need to work without internet connection.

- I noticed that there is now a iCloud menu in my side bar in Finder, with links to Documents and Desktop.

- I also noticed that Documents is not presented anymore in my Favorites in my Finder Side bar.

- The latter suggests that the files saved within 'Documents' are not saved anymore on my HD..., but only in iCloud, which is not what I want.

- So, navigating in Finder to Macintosh HD/Users/'My account'/, I noticed that my Documents and Desktop folders are no longer visible, as if these folders are not saved within my Home Folder anymore. Which triggers the question: Where are my Documents and Folders on my HD, if they still are?

- Using a shell session in terminal, and again navigating to /Users/'My account'/, I noticed that my Documents and Desktop folders are still there. Which suggest that the Folders and Desktop folders actually still reside within my home folder under Users, but that Finder actually hide them there, and present them as being stored in iCloud drive only. This is very confusing.

This raises several questions:

- In the first place, why does Apple hide the Documents and Desktop Folders within the home Directory? Why not display these folders both in iCloud and in the home directory ?

- Where does the iCloud folder, or drive, actually reside on my HD ?

- What about Time Machine. Does it still backup my Documents and Folders files ?

- What about third party app mirroring of backing up my Documents and Folders files ? Will they still work properly ? (I use Livedrive for backup and Sugarsync for mirroring folders across several macs).

- How can I understand what Apple is doing with my folders and files? Some users might be happy with the iCloud drive concept, without worrying about the way it works, but I do not take chances and I want to keep a good grasp on the working of my systems.

Could anyone explain what's exactly going on?

With Desktop and Documents selected, access to those folders are now in the iCloud Drive, not in your home folder.

My guess would be that they are not shown in your Home folder because that would be confusing to a lot of people to have them in two places.

If you want them in Favorites, open iCloud Drive and drag them into the sidebar there.

Everything in iCloud Drive is being saved onto your Mac. Except for Desktop and Documents, they are in ~/Library/Mobile Documents. However, if you choose Optimized storage, then older documents are removed from you Mac. I don't know what "older" is.

~/Desktop and ~/Documents have new metadata attached that likely tells Finder to not display them in a Finder window, only in iCloud Drive. They are not hidden in any of the normal unix ways.

I have not tested Time Machine or any other backup programs. As the folder still exist in your home directory, and they still hold all of the files, I don't imagine anything would change.

As to Time Machine:  If you select your Desktop or the Documents folder as the front most Finder window before entering Time Machine, you will see that the Time Machine backup lets you restore these folders, just like regular folders in your Home folder. It works for any files on iCloud Drive this way.

Thank you for your explanation. Still, I do not understand how files are visible under /users/'my_accounts'/Documents when accessing them via the Terminal, and how these same files are located under library/mobile documents when accessing them via the Finder. There is some magic there that I still don't understand. I guess this is a *nix thing, but I don't get it.

I doubt very much that SugarSync will find them unless you include the Mobile Documents folder explicitly, as for Livedrive I don't know, but I would check, it may not be backing them up.

benoitfromganshoren wrote:

 

Thank you for your explanation. Still, I do not understand how files are visible under /users/'my_accounts'/Documents when accessing them via the Terminal, and how these same files are located under library/mobile documents when accessing them via the Finder.

They are not in your Mobile Documents folder. The folders are just shown there by the Finder.

They are not hidden in any unix way in your Home. It is the Finder, an App like any other, that does not show them in your Home folder. There are various folders inside Mobile Documents, but none seem to point to either Desktop or Documents.

If you drag the Documents or Desktop folder from iCloud Drive into a Terminal window, it will enter the path directly in your Home.

So, given that it is the Finder that is displaying the folders as if they are somewhere else, and all other file system access seems to indicate they are actually inside your home, and there is no underpinning "hiding" done at the file system level, all other applications should see the Desktop and Documents folders exactly as they existed before.

Yep Documents is still in same place i.e. ~/Documents but isn't shown by Finder. ICloud Drive incorporates this folder using a symlink from /Users/mh/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents to your documents folder.

Which is very weird because we cannot put symlinks inside iCloud Drive ourselves. You would have thought Apple would put the real Documents in iCloud Drive and the symlink in the home folder to allow applications to find it. Perhaps they felt some applications wouldn't be able to handle the symlink and preferred the real

Documents folder to stay where it was. Maybe someone from Apple can explain it?

Sorry for font size change, posted this from iPhone and the copied text from Notes and wasn't possible to change it using mobile version of the forum.

You would have thought Apple would put the real Documents in iCloud Drive

I usually let Apple think for themselves, it is normally better that way.

最后更新：2017-08-20 21:06:16

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