How to prevent iCloud Drive files from being downloaded on your Mac

When buying a Mac, consider how much local storage space you are likely to need. Once you’ve made your decision, there’s no going back because Apple Silicon Macs don’t allow you to upgrade the internal hard drive. The problem is that the standard space is low: you’re looking at 256GB of storage and if you want to upgrade it can be expensive.

One way around this is to buy an external drive or make good use of iCloud Drive when space is running low. That’s not a bad thing – some of the best external hard drives have a lot of capacity and iCloud Drive is one of them best free cloud storage options around. With some decent file management, these schemes can work well.

With iCloud Drive in particular, you have the benefit of having files available on your other devices, and with the Optimize Mac Storage feature, you can be sure that when you’re running low on space on your Mac, you’ll still have enough space access all your files: they will be deleted to iCloud Drive as long as you have enough space.

But what if you always want to keep certain files on your Mac—files that you always need to access, even when you don’t have access to iCloud Drive? You can now pin files you don’t want iCloud Drive to delete so they always stay downloaded on your Mac. Here’s how it’s done.

1. Enable storage optimization

How to prevent iCloud Drive files from being downloaded on your Mac

(Image: © Toekomst)

If you’ve enabled Optimize Mac Storage, files from your Desktop and Documents folders will be deleted from your computer’s local storage when space is needed. When this happens, a file’s stub remains on your computer, but its data is stored in iCloud Drive.

If you need access to these files, you can click it in Finder and they will be downloaded to your machine. It makes for a seamless experience and it is generally recommended that you take advantage of the feature.

Just select the Apple menu And click System Settings. Than click General And select Storage. You will find a list of recommendations – just click Optimize next to Save to iCloud.

You can also activate (and deactivate) Mac Storage Optimization if you want go to System Settings, click on your Apple account, select iCloud And select Drive.

2. Pin a file to iCloud Drive

How to prevent iCloud Drive files from being downloaded on your Mac

(Image: © Toekomst)

If there are files you don’t want your Mac to delete to iCloud Drive, you can pin them. This means that they do not need to be downloaded to your computer before you can open them. They’re already there and you don’t need to connect to iCloud.

To do this, launch the Finder app And select iCloud Drive from the sidebar (you can also select Documents or click Desktop). Identify an item you want to leave on your Mac and Control-click the file Than select Stay Downloaded.

If you change your mind and want to allow that file to be deleted to iCloud Drive in the future, Control-click the file again And uncheck Keep Downloaded.

3. Work with multiple files

How to prevent iCloud Drive files from being downloaded on your Mac

You will find that you are able to do this select up to 10 files at a time — if you choose more, you won’t see a Keep Downloaded option. It’s an odd quirk, but it only means you’ll need to work in batches of 10 if you have a lot of files you want to keep.

One way around this is to pin a folder with the files you want to keep downloaded: Control-click the folder And select Stay Downloaded. However, you won’t be able to go to that folder and detach individual files.

And there you go. You now know how to keep iCloud Drive files downloaded on your Mac. But why learn now? 5 tips to get the most out of your new Macbook, how to password protect a folder on a macAnd how to encrypt files on mac.