Files, Documents & iCloud Drive

iiCloud Drive is great for storing and syncing files and documents, and collaborating

What about Shared with You?

If someone shares something with you in the Messages app, you can access it using its native application. A web link, for example, appears in Safari and a news item in News. Other Shared with You apps are Music, TV, Photos and Podcasts. Open one and in its sidebar, you see an option called Shared with You. Tap it to see shared items.

Whether you have the 5GB you get free when you sign up for an Apple ID or pay a monthly subscription for more space, iCloud Drive is like having an external hard drive that’s accessed through the internet. But it’s so much more too.

When a document or file is on iCloud Drive, it’s synced with all your other Apple devices, so you can (for example) create a document on your Mac, leave the house and edit it on your iPad on the train to work. You can even share it with other people directly from the cloud, or work together on collaborative projects with all edits synced between all users. Because your contents on iCloud Drive are stored online, they’re accessible wherever you are in the world. As long as you have internet service, you can use iCloud Drive. You can even use it from non-Apple devices, by heading to iCloud.com. All you need is a computer, tablet or smartphone with an internet connection and a browser. And while nothing on the internet is invulnerable, iCloud Drive is very secure, with end-to-end encryption on for most of your data and in-transit and on-server encryption for Mail, Contacts and Calendar.

Heavily integrated into Apple’s apps and tech, iCloud Drive is an indispensable cloud service for Apple users.