icloud sync frozen fixed with ios

After a three-month iCloud disaster, I finally found a workaround to download the files I thought I should share.

The issue started with problems sharing files from my iCloud with a work partner in Berlin, which kept crashing DaVinci Resolve on my MacPro and his StudioMac that turned into a file syncing issue between us over a few weeks—where my shared directory wouldn't show files he uploaded and vice-versa – which we finally solved by creating a new directory after issuing the killall bird, killall cloud in the terminal. Things worked for a few more weeks until we started having sync problems again.

This time, I downloaded the offending folder and recopied it to the Cloud—file by file—until I found the files causing the hangs. Things worked again for a week until my finder window started crashing, necessitating a force-quit command. When I tried to copy anything from the Cloud to the MacPro, my finder window also started crashing. Then, any app I opened that was even vaguely related to a file on the Cloud began crashing.

At this point, I pulled out my MacBook Pro and found its iCloud folder structure didn't match what I saw on the MacPro – and neither did it match what I saw on my iPad. Moreover, trying to copy from the Cloud to the MacPro was now resulting in a system crash and reboot while trying to copy from the Cloud to my MacBook or time-outs on the iPad—and then the finder window on the MacBook started crashing...at which point, I called support. 

While troubleshooting up the advisor chain, I learned that accessing the Cloud through Safari was also problematic. It was determined nothing was wrong on my end as it was a server on their side – meaning forms were filled out and sent off to the High Priests of Apple...it took a couple of days before they spoke, desiring assurance my iCloud data was backed up so they could replace my broken Cloud with a new one. At that point, I learned the Cloud wasn't maintaining the shared documents between all my devices, and – moreover, I couldn't download a copy of my 15+ years of data...

The workaround was requesting a data dump from the privacy.apple site, which resulted in 148 25GB-sized downloads...problematic as there's apparently no way to easily download them as the system times out after a few minutes...yadaya—and there's also apparently no way to easily reassemble my 148 data blocks into my iCloud file structure. My advisor is a nice guy and could only apologize since this situation isn't supposed to happen with iCloud, and he was equally surprised to find no easy solution to my 148 blocks of data issue.

Naturally, I panicked, then I also noticed my iCloud structure on all of my devices slowly began to sync up over a week.’s time Although I couldn't download on the MacPro without crashing or timing out on the MacBook, I found that if I pushed the iPad file app to download folders, I could eventually copy them to an external drive to rebuild my lost data structure, albeit sometimes needing to issue the download command a few times—and infinitely less painful than dealing with the 148 blocks from Apple.

Apologies for the long-winded narrative, but I wanted to post the iOS finder app tip for anyone with similar issues. Of course, from now on, I plan on keeping a local copy of my Cloud data after learning it's not always as solid as advertised.