iCloud Drive design has trapped my Mac offline – unusable with full storage

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iCloud Drive design has trapped my Mac offline – unusable with full storage

Dear Apple Support,

I am writing because the current iCloud Drive and storage management behavior on macOS has (did) put me in a completely unacceptable situation.

I have a 1 TB Mac and 1 TB of data in iCloud. My Mac has mirrored essentially all of this. I am now on a trip with no internet access, and my internal storage is full. Because everything lives inside iCloud Drive, I cannot safely delete anything locally without also deleting it from iCloud once I reconnect. At the same time, macOS will not reliably “Remove Download” or evict these local copies while offline, even with “Optimize Mac Storage” turned on.

The result:

• I cannot free meaningful disk space.

• I cannot rely on “Remove Download” to offload safely while offline.

• I cannot delete anything in iCloud folders without risking data loss in iCloud later.

• I have no external drive with me, so I am effectively locked out of my own computer.

This is a design failure, not “user error.” There should be a clear, supported way to:

1. Remove local copies of iCloud Drive content to free space without requiring an immediate connection, and

2. Explicitly distinguish between “delete locally only” and “delete from iCloud” so users are not forced into all‑or‑nothing behavior.

Right now, the combination of iCloud Drive, Optimize Mac Storage, and offline behavior has made my Mac practically unusable when I need it most. I strongly urge Apple to rethink this flow and provide a robust, offline‑safe way to free local storage without endangering cloud data.

Please escalate this as product feedback, not just a support ticket. This is the kind of real‑world edge case that completely breaks user trust in iCloud and macOS storage management.

Posted on Dec 7, 2025 11:38 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 8, 2025 1:31 AM in response to JonH2O

This is a user-to-user forum so no official Apple support here.

I agree that iCloud is not perfect. But do remember that iCloud is not a backup but a sync service. So also possible mistakes and file deletions are synced to other devices and to the cloud.

“Remove Download” works for me, but notice that it works only to max 10 documents or max 1 folder at a time (which IMHO is an unnecessary feature). I have not tested how it works with no Internet connection. In my main Mac I use it for selected iCloud Drive documents so there the documents are only placeholders using almost zero disk space. I let my other devices download copies.

Sometimes I have to babysit iCloud Drive by taking care I don't start to edit an old document in another device before it is updated there. Therefore I take notice of the file modification date and/or do a dummy open/close to force a sync before starting editing (some apps like BBEdit seem to on-the-fly update and open such documents but LibreOffice does not). Only once iCloud Drive sync was stuck but a reboot fixed that.

When going to an important meeting or to a place where Internet coverage might be poor I take care to use "Download Now" and/or make a copy to a local folder or a local external drive. I always try to have thumb drive(s) and also extra battery packs for mobile devices when traveling, just in case.

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Answer 2

Dec 8, 2025 8:21 AM in response to JonH2O

As long as your Mac's storage is full you are in for all kinds of trouble. You need at least 10% of your storage to remain free.

You may have misunderstood iCloud. iCloud is not meant as "extra storage" like an external drive. Its purpose is to make your files accessible to other connected devices and to give access to files through a browser. If you choose to use "Optimize Storage," then of course you lose access with no internet.

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