Do more with iCloud

Power up your productivity with these secrets of Apple’s online services

The iCloud.com website has become increasingly useful over the years and now gives you access to webbased versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote to work on documents even without an Apple device to hand. Since the arrival of High Sierra on Mac and iOS 11 on iPhone in 2017, the iCloud service and its website both gained some extra features, in addition to compelling ones that were already only available at the website. Here’s how to make more of iCloud and iCloud.com in your work.

1 Share files in iCloud Drive

You can share files created in apps other than Pages, Numbers and Keynote. In the Files app on iPadOS or iOS 11 or later, locate a file in iCloud Drive that you want to share, tap Select, tap the file, tap Share, and then tap Add People near the bottom of the sheet. In Finder in High Sierra or later choose Go > iCloud Drive, ≈-click the file and choose Share > Add People. In the iCloud Drive app at iCloud.com, select a file and click the rightmost icon in the top-centre group.

Wherever you do this, you can specify whether people can edit the file and if an explicit invitation from you is required to access it – just like in Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

2 Share online storage with your family

As you make greater use of iCloud Drive, your free 5GB of iCloud storage might run out. If you and additional family members need more space, you can share a 200GB or 2TB plan (bit.ly/iclshare), rather than each person separately paying for more.

3 Create contact groups +

At iCloud.com, open Contacts, click the near the bottom left and choose New Group. Name the group, then click on All Contacts and drag people to the group to add to it. This capability is also available in Contacts for Mac, but not the iOS version.

4 Recover deleted items

At iCloud.com, click Account Settings and scroll down to the Advanced section and click Restore Files. Fill checkboxes next to the files you want to recover, then Done to restore them. Alongside this are options to bring back contacts, calendars, reminders, or bookmarks.

5 Create email aliases

While you can now sign up to many apps and websites anonymously using Sign In with Apple, email aliases can still be useful for mailing lists or sites where the Sign In with Apple option is unavailable. iCloud enables you to create up to three email aliases.

To create an alias, open Mail at iCloud.com, click the gear icon at the bottom left, choose Preferences, then click Accounts. Click ‘Add an alias’ and type the words you want to use as the alias (the part that appears in front of @icloud), and next to ‘Full name’ type the name you want to appear in the ‘From’ field. Assign a label and label colour if you want, then click Done.

You can use rules to define how messages to your alias are dealt with. Rules are available in Mail for Mac, but it’s best to perform filtering by alias on the server, which you can do in Mail at iCloud.com. You’ll find Apple’s guide to server-side rules at bit.ly/filtermail.