iCloud sync
iCloud is a great service and, on the whole, works well. I have recently upgraded to the 2TB plan, which is shared amongst my family. The only problem is the lack of selective syncing.
I have an iMac and a Mac mini at home, an iMac at work, and a laptop. I do not want to sync all 800GB of my files to all my devices. I love the idea of it all being in the cloud, but if I do so, the small disks in my Macs at home will be jammed.
Dropbox has a selective sync option, where you can choose not to sync certain files, although you can still access these on other machines or via the web viewer. by Jason vaughan
Alex says… iC loud has its own take on selective syncing, but the way it operates can be somewhat opaque. If you turn on Optimize Mac Storage in iCloud Drive’s preferences, when that Mac’s storage runs low, macOS uses its ongoing analysis of which files you’ve used recently to work out which it can safely delete from that Mac. It leaves a copy in iCloud, and the file looks like it’s where you left it on your Mac, but is actually redownloaded when you try to use it.
How well this works for you depends on how much manual control you demand over what is or isn’t stored on each Mac. Apple’s implementation takes away a great deal of control in the belief that your computer should be able to make sensible decisions without a ton of effort from you.
You didn’t mention iOS devices, but it’s worth talking about them for other readers, given they commonly have less storage than a Mac. Apple’s mobile operating system doesn’t download the entire contents of iCloud Drive even if a device has room for them; files are pulled from the cloud on demand, so on iOS you have to think about what files you may need to use when you have no internet connection.