This was extremely helpful. I searched for this info for a long while and hesitated because all other explanations were not so thorough. Thank you for showing you are not losing the documents and where they will show up. Excellent!!
I accidentally uploaded all my files to the iCloud which slowed down my iMac and spent time trying to find how I could return my files to my hard drive. I followed your video carefully and my files are now restored to the hard drive on my computer. I just wanted to say a huge thank you for your help you have saved 10 years of my life!
2 years later - same nuts iCloud and Photos deserve a class action law suit - they are deliberately designed to trap you into the Apple gravy train at the expense of fast user friendly products
I have watched many videos on this subject and yours is the only one that showed me what to do. All I wanted was to keep my documents only on my Mac not on phone or iPad. Thank you, this is exactly what I want.
You are a rock star...instead of Apple paying people for no help in customer serivice they need to hire you to make more videos and pay you very well. Thank You!
Omg thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!!! Literally EVERY other video I found when trying to solve this problem was showing the OPPOSITE - how to keep in iCloud but delete on local! You are a QUEEN!!!!
Amy, thank you so much! This is such a wonderful tutorial! All my other searches for how to get my documents and desktop back from iCloud were so confusing and did not clarify what to do when the "all files will be removed" scary warning showed up. I've watched some of your other videos to learn more. You are amazing!!! Thank you!!!
OMG thank you so much!! You just saved me from buying the iCloud 2TB Storage Plan. I always wondered why my iCloud is so stuffed until I figured out, that all the university stuff on my MacBook was saved there. Which is definitely not needed, and I had no idea how to remove it without deleting everything!
Thank you so much for this video. I can't believe Apple pulled this crap. I use Carbonite to backup my 5k iMac boot drive, recently upgraded to Ventura. I never wanted iCloud to back it up, but it started doing so. I wouldn't have known what to do to get things back to normal without your video. Thank goodness I could watch your video on a different computer, because I wouldn't have even known where to find the browser that I use after everything disappeared on my desktop. Also, your video saved me from having to lug my 5k iMac to the Apple Store Genuis Bar.
@@MyMacMentor By the way, I signed out of iCloud. Now, how can I delete the data backed up on iCloud with absolutely no risk of it deleting the data on my boot drive? Perhaps you could do another video? Thanks.
Thank you Amy I was so frustrated trying to follow the instructions from Apple and other sites wanting to sell me a new program of some kind. Your instructions were clear and exact and worked a treat. Thank you so very much.
Thank you so much for this video, I just bought a new iMac last week and it said I've already used all my storage which made no sense! This video cleared it all up for me thank you.
Thank you this helped a lot. My iCloud Drive has been full for a while and I didn’t know what was taking it up. But now everything is on my desktop rather than on iCloud
This was so helpful , it has always bugged me how every time I wanted to open a document I had to download it first ! Thank you so much for the help and keep on helping others !:)
I didn't have anything in documents anyway, so this worked for me. I just wanted to move Desktop and Documents to my favorites and off of iCloud, so it worked. Thanks. Why is Apple like everyone else now? They want us to do what profits them, not what helps the user.
Thank you SO MUCH for this video. This is truly one of the most disappointing things Apple has done is making this so incredibly unclear and clumsy. I'm down with being part of the Apple ecosystem I signed up for it, but come on y'all. I'll end my rant by saying I appreciate you so much and this is why we need more women in tech. :)
Thank you very much for this quick and to the point answer. It strikes me as though Apple could have made this much easier and clearer but that probably doesn't prompt an emergency upgrade to one's iCloud storage.
My Airdrop wasn't working. Someone suggested turning on iCloud would help. Hooray, it did. But my files and folders in Documents and on the Desktop were gone. Surprisingly (or maybe not) Apple didn't have an easy way to restore them back to the hard drive. Your video helped a lot. I'm REALLY getting tired of the (borderline underhanded) way Apple tries to push people to use iCloud.
Thank you very much!!!!! It is extremely useful Especially for the part you open up the icloud archive cause my computer did not even pop up the view option
You saved my life! And maybe my business, since iCloud deleted photos for a customer. I can't tell you how hard I looked for a solution to recover all my deleted files that iCloud just removed.
Thank you so much for this. I just updated my computer and accidentally said yes to icloud... all my stuff got thrown onto icloud and I was panicking because my imovie file paths got all messed up. I legit thought i had to manually redownload everything back to local storage one file at a time (icloud's download system didn't allow me to bulk file downloads like on Google Drive) 😑I'm definitely keeping auto-sync off from now on
OHHHHHH Thank you thank you, couldn't figure out how to have everything on my hard drive, cannot say how frustrating it was trying to save/back up on ext hard drive for me... so easy to follow and worked no problem
can't believe I waist last 6 hours on this stupid apple bs on iCloud and thanks to you it took me only 5 minutes to bring everything back to my desktop from iCloud. thank you thank you thank you.
I SO want to do this, but with all the disasters I've experienced lately I am reluctant, especially since I have Ventura and this seems to be based on Catalina. Do you do individual mentoring?
Thank you, it helped me a lot. That iCould thing is so confusing and It was a nightmare. During the isntallation I knew there was ticked syncinc with iCloud but I absolutely had no idea about the scope of what was being backed-up. So first time I realized problem apart form slower computer, was that I found my iCould was full in very short period of time. I do some video editing in Adobe creative cloud and I discovered that is has been backing up my scratchdisk to iCloud! So all those extra large AVI and MP4 video files were backed up into iCloud. Also my computer has been slowing down until It was almost unusable. So just removing iCloud back up it helped significantly with the speed of my computer. When I imagine those countless hours and days that were waisted due to bad mac performance since Cathlina OS update untill now. It is unbelievable. I would have not reccommended Mac to my worst enemy. Thanks for the tutorial.
How to do UNDO EVERYTHING! NOW EVERYTHING IS MESSED UP!!! all my desktop files and documents have a cloud with a ! icon next to it and i can't access!!!! Help me please i just wan to undo this whole thing!
This was helpful, thank you! One question...If I work primarily on my iMac and store everything locally, then, when I am ready for a road trip and plan to use only my MacBook Pro, should I turn the iCloud Drive syncing on for the Documents and Desktop so that it syncs with my MacBook? Then when I return from my trip, do the reverse? Or will I mess up things on the iMac side? Reason I'm asking is because this constant syncing I have going right now with my iMac (yes, I have iCloud Drive on atm with the iMac) is slowing all my processes up! Your advice is appreciated.
Hello is there a way to get all of my folders and docs out of iCloud on once simple motion directly onto an external hard drive? My mac doesn't have enough space to put it on my desktop. I am running Mac Studio Apple M1 Max - Ventura
Hi Melissa - You'd have to download your iCloud data to your desktop and the move it to the external drive. When you move it your computer will ask if you want to move it from iCloud drive and then it will go there. But it will no longer sync with iCloud drive. Hope this helps. If you need more support please sign up at mymacmentor.com
Thanks, useful, however when the files have been held by microsoft excel, it doesn't allow access and suggests file extension and format are invalid. Any tips for opening files with this would be appreciated.
This was very helpful. I barely understand iCloud or iCloud Drive and suddenly I lost my desktop and Documents in my finder sidebar, minus the iCloud versions, but with those, I haven’t been able to save new files, or they appear as invisible (unclickable), and can’t even take a screenshot without it disappearing... I’m not sure if this issue with not being able to save files is due to the iCloud Drive or not, so if you have any tips on that, I would appreciate it. Thx!!
hi, I accidentally did the iCloud Drive for desktop and documents, the file from desktop was too big to transfer to iCloud, will I still be able to follow these steps to get the file back to my desktop because I really need it on the desktop as it won't open via iCloud.
Hello Amy great video - quick question: when trying to slide my folders, which were taken out of icloud drive, onto my desktop i get the notification that i cant because i dont have enough storage. can i slide it immediately onto an external drive?
Hi Jean-Christophe - if you are out of computer space, you should be able to go right to an external hard drive - but you should book an appointment with us so we can ensure your hard drive is really full or if we think you should upgrade: www.mymacmentor.com/book-appointment
Thanks. Is what you describe here the reason I've stopped being able to see my Documents folder, even in Mac HD or under Users? My icloud storage was full and I've just bumped it up to be able to access my files. But I still can't see them anywhere else. They are clearly still on the computer, as they show up in About this Mac under 'storage'. I really want to be able to do without iCloud on the mac but don't have the courage to work through your steps without having a plan B, ie being able to acess the files on the Mac itself.
Yes. They move to iCloud Drive instead of the home folder. We can certainly take a deeper look if you want to book a session and dedicate 30 or 60 minutes to finding a solution! www.mymacmentor.com
TYSM you lifesaver. What happens I was living in US and had US phone and US phone #. I moved to Japan and got a new phone with a Japanese phone # and its own icloud. My MacBook and all apps are linked to US one, is there an easy make switch without losing expensive music and video editing apps i bought? If I switch icloud id am I going to lose everything? I don't know if I backed up things via time machine, prolly not, just whatever is by default and on an external drive.
Thanks for your video. In your video, you said Desktop & Document folders are empty but my Desktop and Document Folder itself is missing! (In the user folder no such folders are available). They are only in the iCloud drive. Need help.
I cannot thank you enough - 30 minutes of pure panic solved by a 4 minute video. I owe you my firstborn!
Glad it helped!
This was extremely helpful. I searched for this info for a long while and hesitated because all other explanations were not so thorough. Thank you for showing you are not losing the documents and where they will show up. Excellent!!
you made this seem so easy, thank you. Tbh apple are sh*t for not making this whole process simpler in the first place.
I accidentally uploaded all my files to the iCloud which slowed down my iMac and spent time trying to find how I could return my files to my hard drive.
I followed your video carefully and my files are now restored to the hard drive on my computer.
I just wanted to say a huge thank you for your help you have saved 10 years of my life!
Oh good! Glad to help!!!
iCloud is driving me nuts
Hi Sofia, how can we help? Feel free to schedule a consultation with us at www.mymacmentor.com/book-appointments :)
sameee
@@nazaree4000 It happens, but take it slow and steady. Or schedule a call with us to help!
2 years later - same nuts
iCloud and Photos deserve a class action law suit - they are deliberately designed to trap you into the Apple gravy train at the expense of fast user friendly products
Hey - great video instructions!!
FINALLY. The only video on RUclips about exact this problem that I had. Thank you!
Simple and clear instructions, exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!
Perfect. That's our intention.
I have watched many videos on this subject and yours is the only one that showed me what to do. All I wanted was to keep my documents only on my Mac not on phone or iPad. Thank you, this is exactly what I want.
Perfect! Glad you were able to get it sorted. et us know if you need any other help!
You are a rock star...instead of Apple paying people for no help in customer serivice they need to hire you to make more videos and pay you very well. Thank You!
Omg thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!!! Literally EVERY other video I found when trying to solve this problem was showing the OPPOSITE - how to keep in iCloud but delete on local! You are a QUEEN!!!!
We are glad we were able to help!
THIS WAS THE MOST HELPFUL VIDEO I HAVE WATCHED ALL DAY
Amy you are a "God Send" I've had this problem for a year with no fix until today. Thank you so much! I hope you and yours have an amazing holiday!!
Amy, thank you so much! This is such a wonderful tutorial! All my other searches for how to get my documents and desktop back from iCloud were so confusing and did not clarify what to do when the "all files will be removed" scary warning showed up. I've watched some of your other videos to learn more. You are amazing!!! Thank you!!!
Hi Chris - so glad that it worked, and you were able to get your data back. Glad to be of service!
OMG thank you so much!! You just saved me from buying the iCloud 2TB Storage Plan. I always wondered why my iCloud is so stuffed until I figured out, that all the university stuff on my MacBook was saved there. Which is definitely not needed, and I had no idea how to remove it without deleting everything!
Great. A dollar saved is a dollar earned!
Thank you so much for this! Was having a really hard time and your video was super easy to follow!
It took me a solid 15 min to finally hit that turn off button! LOL.... Thank you so much for this!
Thank you so much for this video. I can't believe Apple pulled this crap. I use Carbonite to backup my 5k iMac boot drive, recently upgraded to Ventura. I never wanted iCloud to back it up, but it started doing so. I wouldn't have known what to do to get things back to normal without your video. Thank goodness I could watch your video on a different computer, because I wouldn't have even known where to find the browser that I use after everything disappeared on my desktop. Also, your video saved me from having to lug my 5k iMac to the Apple Store Genuis Bar.
Glad we can help
@@MyMacMentor By the way, I signed out of iCloud. Now, how can I delete the data backed up on iCloud with absolutely no risk of it deleting the data on my boot drive? Perhaps you could do another video? Thanks.
Thanks Emmy, it was really helpful. I got scared for once that how to disable the icloud and get back my files. Keep posting good stuff.
You are welcome
Thank you Amy I was so frustrated trying to follow the instructions from Apple and other sites wanting to sell me a new program of some kind. Your instructions were clear and exact and worked a treat. Thank you so very much.
Glad to be of assistance!
Thank you so much for this video, I just bought a new iMac last week and it said I've already used all my storage which made no sense! This video cleared it all up for me thank you.
Thank you this helped a lot. My iCloud Drive has been full for a while and I didn’t know what was taking it up. But now everything is on my desktop rather than on iCloud
It was the shortest and accurate resolution I was looking for
Perfect!
You're a lifesaver! Thank you for providing information that Apple seem to have gone out of their way to obscure.
You are welcome!
This was so helpful , it has always bugged me how every time I wanted to open a document I had to download it first ! Thank you so much for the help and keep on helping others !:)
I didn't have anything in documents anyway, so this worked for me. I just wanted to move Desktop and Documents to my favorites and off of iCloud, so it worked. Thanks. Why is Apple like everyone else now? They want us to do what profits them, not what helps the user.
Thank you SO MUCH for this video. This is truly one of the most disappointing things Apple has done is making this so incredibly unclear and clumsy. I'm down with being part of the Apple ecosystem I signed up for it, but come on y'all. I'll end my rant by saying I appreciate you so much and this is why we need more women in tech. :)
Thank you very much for this quick and to the point answer. It strikes me as though Apple could have made this much easier and clearer but that probably doesn't prompt an emergency upgrade to one's iCloud storage.
Thank you, thank you, thank you... I had the scare of my life when I saw everything gone and started panicking but then I found you to save me!!!
Glad to help. If you need anything else, please reach out!
O. M. G. You saved my life!!! You must be protected at all costs. I love you! Thank you!!
thanks i have been annoyed with this for months now and this has to stop and now it did thanks to you!
A very nice tone and amiable voice , simple descriptive and informative , excellent thank you
Thanks!!
My Airdrop wasn't working. Someone suggested turning on iCloud would help. Hooray, it did. But my files and folders in Documents and on the Desktop were gone. Surprisingly (or maybe not) Apple didn't have an easy way to restore them back to the hard drive. Your video helped a lot. I'm REALLY getting tired of the (borderline underhanded) way Apple tries to push people to use iCloud.
Glad we can help.
Great video. Was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
Great to hear!
Thank you very much!!!!!
It is extremely useful
Especially for the part you open up the icloud archive cause my computer did not even pop up the view option
Glad we can help!
I can't believe that Mac is so utterly stupid. If you disable auto synching is because you want your files in your computer drive!
This was very helpful--I can follow the instructions in a video much easier than following written instructions.
Happy to hear!
You saved my life! And maybe my business, since iCloud deleted photos for a customer. I can't tell you how hard I looked for a solution to recover all my deleted files that iCloud just removed.
So glad we could help.
Omg thank you so much. I thought I was losing my mind. Apple’s sure gonna get an earful from me!
I followed your step by step process for moving my desktop documents out of iCloud and it was successful!!! Thank you for posting this video!!!!
This was a HUGE help. Thank you for doing this. I was so frustrated as I couldnt get a presentation to open. This fixed it right up
Awesome! Happy to help.
Thank you so much for this. I just updated my computer and accidentally said yes to icloud... all my stuff got thrown onto icloud and I was panicking because my imovie file paths got all messed up. I legit thought i had to manually redownload everything back to local storage one file at a time (icloud's download system didn't allow me to bulk file downloads like on Google Drive) 😑I'm definitely keeping auto-sync off from now on
Glad to help
amazing! saved me a lot of heartache even currently in 2022
Glad to be helpful - dont forget to share with everyone!
Thank You! Even Apple support wasn’t able to do this or even suggest anything remotely as simple as this.
its helpful, even though its quite straight forward. but others made it very tricky. So Thank you
Great glad it worked for you!
Thank you. The most reasonable solution for the most unreasonable iCloud future. Seriously!!!
Great tip and tuition, thank you. It was so infuriating having all my files 'defaulted' onto the cloud. Thanks, again, for helping me sort this out.
You're very welcome.
Great video. Very easy to follow. THANKS big time. I watched 2 other videos before yours that didnt solve the problem. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much! This video was really helpful cause my cloud storage kept getting filled by documents.
Glad to help!
OHHHHHH Thank you thank you, couldn't figure out how to have everything on my hard drive, cannot say how frustrating it was trying to save/back up on ext hard drive for me... so easy to follow and worked no problem
This is the kind of stuff that drives me bananas with MAC. Thanks for the vid
True. You're welcome!
I like the style you are doing your videos!
can't believe I waist last 6 hours on this stupid apple bs on iCloud and thanks to you it took me only 5 minutes to bring everything back to my desktop from iCloud. thank you thank you thank you.
You are quite welcome!!
Even i was puzzled of how to get my music back .....thank you
You are welcome!
Can you please update this for Ventura 13.1? I am having difficulty doing this exactly as you show in this video. It is so helpful though. Thank you!
Thanks! Yeah we'll have a new version soon.
Awesome tutorial, you cured my illness!! :)
Glad we can help.
Thank you this was so helpful. I hate iCloud
Glad it's helpful. No reason to hate iCloud, it has it's pluses and minuses.
THANKS!!!!! AHAHAHAHAH! I hate Icloud this has been a thorn in my side, finally, just want it on the laptop directly : )
You are welcome @colton!
So helpful, could not find docs when I started this new Mac.
Thank you! You saved my vacation!
So glad we could save your vacation. Enjoy it!!!
I SO want to do this, but with all the disasters I've experienced lately I am reluctant, especially since I have Ventura and this seems to be based on Catalina. Do you do individual mentoring?
Thank you, it helped me a lot. That iCould thing is so confusing and It was a nightmare. During the isntallation I knew there was ticked syncinc with iCloud but I absolutely had no idea about the scope of what was being backed-up. So first time I realized problem apart form slower computer, was that I found my iCould was full in very short period of time. I do some video editing in Adobe creative cloud and I discovered that is has been backing up my scratchdisk to iCloud! So all those extra large AVI and MP4 video files were backed up into iCloud. Also my computer has been slowing down until It was almost unusable. So just removing iCloud back up it helped significantly with the speed of my computer. When I imagine those countless hours and days that were waisted due to bad mac performance since Cathlina OS update untill now. It is unbelievable. I would have not reccommended Mac to my worst enemy. Thanks for the tutorial.
Thank you Amy! I am so grateful, this really helped me out.
You are welcome!
Thank you so much!!! I was looking for this info for months!!
Wow, thank you so much! Saved me so much frustration in under 5 minutes!
Thank you...bought an eternal drive for my backup to use for this. Well, now I have and extra 2 TB!
Nice!
Grateful for your help!
Sad it even has to be done ugh 😑
It doesn't have to be. There is nothing really that bad about iCloud Drive in it's current instance. It's just a question of convenience versus costs.
Thank you. I did find this confusing but not anymore. I will be following you for more useful advice.
Apple should definitely hire you
Hi,
That is great explanation. I read a lot forums and tried many solution. Your tips just worked. Thanks a lot.
Thank you so much Amy! Finally I feel like I have some control over what's happening on my computer.
Direct and straight to the point. You're a life saver! :)
Glad I could help!
thank you for saving my life !! I will subscribe right away
Perfect - thanks so much, I couldn't find this info anywhere else
Thank you so much. Been looking for this for so long.
How to do UNDO EVERYTHING! NOW EVERYTHING IS MESSED UP!!! all my desktop files and documents have a cloud with a ! icon next to it and i can't access!!!! Help me please i just wan to undo this whole thing!
This was helpful, thank you! One question...If I work primarily on my iMac and store everything locally, then, when I am ready for a road trip and plan to use only my MacBook Pro, should I turn the iCloud Drive syncing on for the Documents and Desktop so that it syncs with my MacBook? Then when I return from my trip, do the reverse? Or will I mess up things on the iMac side? Reason I'm asking is because this constant syncing I have going right now with my iMac (yes, I have iCloud Drive on atm with the iMac) is slowing all my processes up! Your advice is appreciated.
You have just saved my life, OMG! Thanks a loot!
Wonderful news!
Hello is there a way to get all of my folders and docs out of iCloud on once simple motion directly onto an external hard drive? My mac doesn't have enough space to put it on my desktop. I am running Mac Studio Apple M1 Max - Ventura
Hi Melissa - You'd have to download your iCloud data to your desktop and the move it to the external drive. When you move it your computer will ask if you want to move it from iCloud drive and then it will go there. But it will no longer sync with iCloud drive. Hope this helps. If you need more support please sign up at mymacmentor.com
Finally an answer!!! Thank you. So, now what process can I do for the PHOTO LIBRARY in iCloud to move to my Mac?
I did not get the Prompt "Show in Finder" when I clicked on Turn Off. Why?
Thanks, useful, however when the files have been held by microsoft excel, it doesn't allow access and suggests file extension and format are invalid. Any tips for opening files with this would be appreciated.
Thank you ❤️,You saved me from depressing my mind.
I'm so glad!
Thank you so much my good friend! This was extremely helpful and taught me a lot!
I turned off icoud drive and all my files disappeared, is there any way I can get them back ?
besides turning the feature back in idk i did the same thing.. still trying to figure it out
You'll find them at iCloud.com.
Thanks. This was exactly what I needed.
So glad to hear this!
Thank you for this video - it was a great help.
Glad it was helpful Shelly!
This was very helpful. I barely understand iCloud or iCloud Drive and suddenly I lost my desktop and Documents in my finder sidebar, minus the iCloud versions, but with those, I haven’t been able to save new files, or they appear as invisible (unclickable), and can’t even take a screenshot without it disappearing... I’m not sure if this issue with not being able to save files is due to the iCloud Drive or not, so if you have any tips on that, I would appreciate it. Thx!!
hi, I accidentally did the iCloud Drive for desktop and documents, the file from desktop was too big to transfer to iCloud, will I still be able to follow these steps to get the file back to my desktop because I really need it on the desktop as it won't open via iCloud.
you are a legend for this!
You are welcome!
Thank you! This video was extremely helpful.
Hello Amy great video - quick question: when trying to slide my folders, which were taken out of icloud drive, onto my desktop i get the notification that i cant because i dont have enough storage. can i slide it immediately onto an external drive?
Hi Jean-Christophe - if you are out of computer space, you should be able to go right to an external hard drive - but you should book an appointment with us so we can ensure your hard drive is really full or if we think you should upgrade: www.mymacmentor.com/book-appointment
Thank you I had 1,365 icons in my desktop now is clean!
Great!
Thanks. Is what you describe here the reason I've stopped being able to see my Documents folder, even in Mac HD or under Users? My icloud storage was full and I've just bumped it up to be able to access my files. But I still can't see them anywhere else. They are clearly still on the computer, as they show up in About this Mac under 'storage'. I really want to be able to do without iCloud on the mac but don't have the courage to work through your steps without having a plan B, ie being able to acess the files on the Mac itself.
Yes. They move to iCloud Drive instead of the home folder. We can certainly take a deeper look if you want to book a session and dedicate 30 or 60 minutes to finding a solution! www.mymacmentor.com
Thank you so much for the information. This was extremely useful. Keep it up!
TYSM you lifesaver. What happens I was living in US and had US phone and US phone #. I moved to Japan and got a new phone with a Japanese phone # and its own icloud. My MacBook and all apps are linked to US one, is there an easy make switch without losing expensive music and video editing apps i bought? If I switch icloud id am I going to lose everything? I don't know if I backed up things via time machine, prolly not, just whatever is by default and on an external drive.
Thanks for your video. In your video, you said Desktop & Document folders are empty but my Desktop and Document Folder itself is missing! (In the user folder no such folders are available). They are only in the iCloud drive. Need help.
Thank you so much for the step by step instructions!
This was really really helpful, thank you so much!!
You are welcome.
Thank you so much, sister! You're a hero!
You are quite welcome!
iCloud Drive is such a massive pain in the ass. Thanks
You are welcome.