Multiple bugs with iCloud Drive on Mac

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Multiple bugs with iCloud Drive on Mac

I have 1.5TB stored in iCloud and 1.1TB stored in iCloud Drive. Looking at the 'Storage' panel of my Mac Studio under 'General' System Settings, I see the row of iCloud Drive showing '3.45GB'. Clicking the 'i' icon shows "iCloud Drive is using 3.45 GB of storage. Files and folders kept offline are using 496.90 GB of storage."

This sentence doesn't make sense. I either have 496.90 GB or 3.45GB stored on my Mac. The correct one is 496GB. Using "DaisyDisk" software, I know which folders take up a lot of space; However, I already deselected the "Keep Downloaded" option for these folders, and I also clicked the "Remove download" option, and I see the icon to download the folder, but it still takes up space on my Mac's SSD. I have no way to offload the data except for disabling iCloud completely.

iCloud is showing that it's synced, or up to date. No sign of process being made to offload any data, and I clicked the "Remove download" option for those folders a few weeks or months ago.

My books library is not synced well (I uploaded a book to my Macbook, the upload process was complete from the Macbook end about 2 hours ago, but the book is still not showing up on my Mac Studio.

Moreover, the Finder application on my Mac Studio gets stuck on every click, and the Preview app (reading a book located in Books library of iCloud) on my MacBook Pro gets stuck on every click.

When will these issues be fixed? iCloud has been frustrating around these issues for years already.

Specs:

Sequoia 15.6 on my Mac Studio 2022, M1 Max w/ 64GB ram
Sequoia 15.6 on my MacBook Pro 16-inch 2019, Intel 8-core i9 2.4GHz, Radeon Pro 5300 4GB, 32GB ram

Mac Studio, macOS 15.6

Posted on Aug 20, 2025 03:22 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 17, 2025 02:43 AM in response to IshayF

My message apparently was too long

Not that I have the exact same issues you have, but I share your frustration with iCloud Drive. I have 2 TB space in my iClud Drine and is using 600 GB ... 442 for "Drive", 60 GB for "Messages" and 29.145 items for images ... I must assume the 29.145 items equals approximately 100 GB to make the numbers meet ...

But my issue is another, and it started with it started with Messages …

Wednesday morning September 10, I touched the spacebar to wake my Mac from sleep and checked my mail. While doing that my phone told med I had received a Message (are they still called iMessage?) and when i wanted to respond to it, I noticed Messages wasn’t running on my Mac, which was weird, because it always is. I type most of my messages on the Mac.

So I found Messages in the dock, clicked it and was asked to sign in. That was unusual, I never have to do that, since I use it all the time.

But I typed my Apple ID and my password and it logged me in as expected - except I did not see the new message I was planning to respond to. And after 15 seconds the Messages window disappeared and the Messages login window appeared again. I tried numerous time, but never got it to work.

So I restarted and tried aganin. No luck.

Annoyed I went to my workshop and opened the old computer I have there … a 2015 MBP with Monterey, and it was exactly the same. It had also logged itself out of Messages, and I could not log in.

So, probably not a computer related issue, right?

I called Apple, and I have at this time talked to 7 advisors.

The first one suggested it was the connection from my computer to iCloud, and I could solve it by logging out of iCloud and wait a few minutes and then log back in.

Now, logging out of iCloud is not something you just do, when you also use iCloud Drive and Calendar and whathaveyou. It takes time, and I have had problems with it before back in January.

I have to say, at this point, that I don't have Optimize Mac Storage enabled, so I have all my folders and files in “full size" on my computer. In other words, it should not take long to log in and start working.

So I did it to try to solve the Messages issue.

And I shouldn’t have. Big mistake.

More text in the Additional text feature ... click in the top of this message to read it all

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