When Will iCloud Improve for True Mac Backups and Storage Management?

iCloud is not meant to be a full cloud backup service for Macs. I don't believe that Google Photos is meant to be, ether.

If you want true cloud backup, you might want to look at the plans offered by BackBlaze . I have never used their service, but I have heard of it. For backup, they have different plans depending on whether you are doing backup for business use or personal use.

AaronIOS wrote: …Or at least give us the option to truly offload data from local storage to the cloud?

Like this?

You can choose to remove a file from your local iCloud Drive folder. A right click on a file will produce a sub-menu

where you can choose "Remove Download" and replace the actual file with a link to iCloud.com. Then, when you double click on that link version of the file, it will download the file and open it in the usual app. You will again be dealing with a local file.

If you turn on iCloud Status in Finder>View, you can see how each file is being handled"

Shown above,

Desktop is both local and at iCloud.com

The photoslibrary is ignored because it's not allowed in iCloud Drive

Rainbow stays only in iCloud until clicked

See this:

Understanding iCloud Drive - Apple Community

AaronIOS wrote:

Would love to hear if anyone has a fix or if Apple has plans to improve this.

No one here would know Apple's plans for the future. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

IdrisSeabright wrote:

AaronIOS wrote:

Would love to hear if anyone has a fix or if Apple has plans to improve this.

No one here would know Apple's plans for the future. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Actually, Richard.Taylor’s post, that appeared simultaneously with yours, explains how to use this existing feature. Note that it only works on Macs, not iOS devices.

Even something like BackBlaze cloud backup presumes that the OP is going to keep original copies of all files on the Mac.

If the OP's goal is to archive files to cloud storage, and not to have them take up space on the Mac at all, that would be something different from backup. It also raises the question - why not get an external drive, archive things to it, and then back up it (as well as the internal drive)?

I was responding more to their interest in backing up to iCloud, something you can't really do from a Mac (unless I've missed something).