Desktop/Documents & iCloud Drive appear empty — ~500 GB missing

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Level 1

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Desktop/Documents & iCloud Drive appear empty — ~500 GB missing

Hi everyone, looking for help and confirmation if this is a known issue.

I updated to 15.6.1 and about a day later all my Desktop icons started disappearing. Now I can’t access my apps or files from the Desktop—it looks empty. In iCloud Drive(including the website), I still see the folder structure, but the folders are empty. Roughly 500 GB of data appears to be missing.I rely on iCloud Drive for Desktop/Documents, so this is most of my work/data.

I have an active ticket with a senior support specialist. We’ve already tried all the basic troubleshooting and he told me it was a known issue.

my questions

Is anyone else on Sequoia 15.6.1 seeing Desktop/Documents and iCloud Drive contents vanish while the folder names remain?

Any safe, proven steps that brought your files back (beyond the basics I listed)?

Has anyone had success getting Apple to do a server-side restore for iCloud Drive (beyond the 30-day Recently Deleted window)? (It’s only been about 7 days. But getting paranoid)

the strangest part is that this is also on iCloud.com all the folders are empty or missing massive amounts of content.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Aug 28, 2025 01:07 PM

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Answer 1

Mac Jim ID

Level 9

53,072 points

Aug 28, 2025 01:33 PM in response to Caladyne

It would seem your situation is unique as there have not been any reports of users experiencing that here on the support site, and I can confirm that there is no problem on my Mac after updating.

The good news is that you have a support ticket open and if the specialist said that it is a known issue, they may have come across it through in-house testing or from users where it has not been reported here. In either case, it does not seem widespread, but the only thing that matters is if Apple will be able to resolve the problem for you.

Without any other reports, the outcome is unknown, but please provide any additional information if you are able to get it resolved. The information you provide may be valuable for anyone else that has come across the same problem with the OS 15.6.1 update and are looking here.

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