I have a 2018 MacBook Air running the latest non-beta Catalina (10.15.3 as of this writing). For as long as I can remember, I have used Safari’s bookmark syncing via iCloud, and it has worked very well. One might even say flawlessly. Last weekend I decided that I had accumulated too many bookmarks that I was never going to use which was making it hard to find what I wanted, so I decided to “clean house” — I exported my bookmarks from Safari and deleted _everything_ except _one folder_ named “Forums” which I use often. I logged in to my Macs and iOS devices to make sure that they all had the same one folder left. I think I might have had to manually delete them again on one or two devices, honestly I don’t remember because I didn’t realize this was going to become A Thing. So now have: - one MacBook Air running Catalina - one Mac Mini running Mojave - one Mac Mini running High Sierra - one iPad - one iPhone The bookmarks on the MacBook Air are working fine locally. However, everything else is broken. Changes made on other devices will sync to other devices, but do _NOT_ sync to the MacBook Air. All of the other devices (except the Air) keep getting duplicates of that “Forums” folder. I just deleted about a dozen of them. Even as I was deleting them, more appeared. I tried deleting a bookmark on one of the non-MacBook Airs, and not only did it not sync to the Air, but more duplicates re-appeared. Once the duplicates stopped happening, future changes sync between all of the devices _except the Air_ seem to happen almost simultaneously, even for the Mac mini which is co-located across the USA. I logged out of iCloud completely on the MacBook Air. I rebooted my MacBook Air. I logged back in to iCloud on the MacBook Air. The exact same problem is happening. The MBAir is not getting changes from other Macs, even though it is on the same Wi-Fi network with several other devices which are syncing perfectly well. Making changes on the MBAir causes more duplicates on the other devices. At this point it seems like this must be a Catalina issue. Then I remembered my 2015 MacBook was running Catalina too, so I booted it up. It is syncing just like all of the other non-MBAir devices. So it’s not Catalina. It’s something about Catalina on _this_ account. I tried logging into iCloud.com to see if I could delete my Safari bookmarks from there (“The truth is in the cloud”) but there is no option to do that. The only option is to restore deleted bookmarks from the previous 30 days. I am well-and-truly out of ideas. I guess I could create another local user account on my MBAir and log in to my iCloud account there, but I’m not sure what that would really accomplish anything meaningful. If it worked—then what would I do next? Any ideas welcomed and appreciated. --- ***Edited to add:*** Not sure if this is important or related, but I'm also having problems with the Home.app on my MacBook Air not syncing properly with other HomeKit devices. I do not have any outgoing firewall software installed like Little Snitch or Trip Mode. --- ***Edit 2:*** I did a Safe Boot to eliminate any potential software issues with iCloud, and it had no effect. --- ***Edit 3:*** Finding no good answers for this anywhere, I logged in to my backup Administrator account, deleted my regular account, and then re-created it. Safari bookmarks are syncing again. I did find some messages in the Console log about the SafariBookmarksSyncAgent but googling the error message and/or SafariBookmarksSyncAgent itself did not turn up any helpful information.

So I know what iCloud does backup: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428 But I couldn't find any source on what it **doesn't** backup I accidentally bricked my phone and loaded my backup onto another phone (it's been a while), but I did notice a few things (I'll continue adding things to these lists as I use my phone, in case anybody wonders the same thing): Things that did not backup/move over to new phone: ----- 1) There was **no** call history, that **didn't** get backed up 2) Apps that were no longer available in the app store did not get backed up 3) Apps that I had developed and deployed to my phone were not backed up (icons still there, though) Things that did backup/move over (somewhat surprisingly): ----- 1) Apps that saved session tokens still persisted (was still logged in to a lot of apps) 2) Probably for the same reason the session tokens were backedup, my downloaded Spotify songs also came along 3) I would've guessed that only iMessages would've been backed up, but looks like all of my SMS texts to android friends also got backed up which is nice 4) It did backup my iOS settings, I had sleeping screen turned off, and it was brought over Main reason I'm asking is because I wasn't sure if I should go through the effort of trying to revive the phone to get any obscure data off of it. In an ideal world I would get an exact copy. I'm OK just throwing it out otherwise Not sure if anybody's ever kept track, if there's a resource somewhere out there that has a list, that would be great closure for me. Thanks!

I have a problem with Safari on iPhone and Mac. History and iCloud tabs sync but Bookmarks not. I tried to: turn off/on iCloud backup on both devices, turn off/on devices, reset Safari, use the answer to https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/333912/bookmarks-not-being-synced-from-macos-to-ios , and still nothing. Any solutions?

On my iPad pro with iPadOS version 18.6 I want to back up data to iCloud for 2 or 3 apps without including several GB of pictures and operating system files. How do I do this?

I read that I could rename a folder to have the..tmp extension to prevent it syncing over. I did this to a folder that had some confidential files, but I renamed the folder in my icloud drive and the files have all disappeared. I found a copy of the folder on the desktop, but that was also empty. Any idea where I could locate these files or are they lost?

Can I save data storage space on my iPhone by moving Notes folders from On My iPhone to iCloud, if possible, how?

I'm experiencing an issue on my MacBook Air (macOS 15.1) where I can't log into Messages or FaceTime. Whenever I try, I just get an endless spinning wheel. I've already tried the following troubleshooting steps without success: Resetting NVRAM Changing networks Logging in and out of iCloud Force quitting the apps Restarting my computer. Has anyone encountered this before or found a solution?

I have an iPhone 14 running iOS 17.1.1. I have disabled most iCloud stuff for my iPhone, but I just noticed that iCloud Drive under Storage in Settings comes with a note saying that files stored in iCloud Drive (and probably data used by certain third party apps) are downloaded on-demand. I want those files on my iPhone. If I turn off iCloud Drive syncing, then they won't be on my phone and would instead be deleted from my phone. How do I fix this?

I downloaded the macOS Sierra (GM) and installed it on my MacBook. Before I installed it a backed up all my data that isn't stored in the cloud or somewhere else. I'm using iCloud Photos to sync all my photos and videos with iCloud. Every photo and video is already in iCloud so I may don't need to back up my Photos library, but I did - just in case something goes wrong. So I wiped off all the data from my MacBook to do a complete and clean installation of Sierra. Finally everything works fine and I'm going to get all my photos and videos back to the Photos app. My backup of my photos and videos has ~13GB and I really have a slow internet connection, so it would be nice if I could use the backed up library instead of downloading everything from iCloud. As soon as I open my library with Photos it starts importing and optimizing etc. and all photos and videos are there. But it starts uploading every single photo and video to iCloud? How can I tell Photos that my photos and videos are already in iCloud and it should stop uploading?

I have a backup of my old iphone stored in icloud, and I would like to get just the photos from it without restoring the entire backup to my new phone, is there any way to do this? The old phone cannot be used as it is dead, and the photos in question are not saved in iCloud photos. I have tried the solutions from https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/297039/accessing-photos-on-iphone-icloud-backup , but they are deprecated and no longer work.

I launched the Mac Calendar app, only to see no calendars or events. I quit the app, but on restart it now shows "Updating calendars..." and a never-ending progress bar... Quitting the app doesn't work. Force Quitting the app does close it, but the progress bar is displayed at the next startup as well. How can I move past this screen and update my calendars?

I recently moved from outlook to icloud-mail (as it's free) using my custom domain. Switching was easy, now I'm trying to move my existing mails from outlook to icloud mail. I've decided that I will login both my outlook and icloud-mail accounts via IMAP on thunderbird and would then simply copy everything from outlook->icloud. The problem I'm facing is that I can't login on thunderbird. When I enter my custom-domain email thunderbird finds the correct imap/smtp hostnames etc., but when I try to login using an app-password (2FA is enabled) I get an error stating username/password doesn't work. I also tried it with my @icloud.com mail, following this article: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202304 But this ended with the same result. Now is it even possible to login with IMAP to my custom domain mail?

The sync between icloud and my ipad and my mac doesn't, for all services (icloud drive, Ibooks...) My mac is running Catalina 10.15.3 My ipad is running Ios 13.3.1 Nothing is sync on the devices but the data are available via icloud.com. Here's what I tried: - Sign off and sign in from I cloud. - Restart many times - Kill the bird process and deleting the ~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs as described here https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/313716/icloud-drive-wont-sync-on-mac Thanks Here are the bird logs (via brctl log): ERR 2020-03-17 20:45:57.392+0100] Terminal Failed getting container for URL: , error: Error Domain=BRCloudDocsErrorDomain Code=7 UserInfo={NSDescription=, NSFilePath= [note 2020-03-18 01:19:55.876+0100] revisiond Cache delete asked us to reclaim with urgency 1 [note 2020-03-18 01:19:56.881+0100] revisiond Cache delete asked us to reclaim with urgency 1 [note 2020-03-18 01:19:56.942+0100] revisiond Cache delete asked us to reclaim with urgency 1 [note 2020-03-18 01:19:57.014+0100] revisiond Cache delete asked us to reclaim with urgency 1 [WARN 2020-03-18 17:52:12.595+0100] revisiond This volume is runnning "" which is not supported [WARN 2020-03-18 17:52:12.595+0100] revisiond This volume is runnning "" which is not supported [CRIT 2020-03-18 18:51:36.306+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [ERR 2020-03-18 18:52:41.542+0100] com.apple.CloudDocs.MobileDocumentsFileProvider can't find image with size for [CRIT 2020-03-18 18:52:41.543+0100] com.apple.CloudDocs.MobileDocumentsFileProvider Provider returned error from domain BRCloudDocsErrorDomain which is unsupported. Supported error domains are N [note 2020-03-18 18:54:18.039+0100] revisiond device 1000015 had a metainfo file [note 2020-03-18 18:54:19.197+0100] revisiond device 1000015 UUID matches metadata [note 2020-03-18 18:54:19.214+0100] revisiond Quitting throttled mode on device 16777237 [note 2020-03-18 18:54:19.327+0100] revisiond Library on device 1000015, loaded status [ERR 2020-03-18 18:55:13.609+0100] Finder -[BRFrameworkContainerHelper br_capabilityToMoveFromURL:toNewParent:error:]: (passed to caller) error: Error Domain=BRCloudDocsErrorDomain Code=6 UserInf [ERR 2020-03-18 18:55:16.531+0100] Finder -[BRFrameworkContainerHelper br_capabilityToMoveFromURL:toNewParent:error:]: (passed to caller) error: Error Domain=BRCloudDocsErrorDomain Code=6 UserInf [CRIT 2020-03-18 18:55:25.728+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [ERR 2020-03-18 18:56:08.074+0100] Finder -[BRFrameworkContainerHelper br_capabilityToMoveFromURL:toNewParent:error:]: (passed to caller) error: Error Domain=BRCloudDocsErrorDomain Code=6 UserInf [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:00:31.546+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:05:32.194+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:11:06.303+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [ERR 2020-03-18 19:15:50.197+0100] bird fts_read() failed for path [2: No such file or directory] [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:15:50.914+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:16:36.120+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:22:06.120+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:27:31.578+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [CRIT 2020-03-18 19:32:35.818+0100] bird UNREACHABLE: can't open [ERR 2020-03-18 19:36:13.390+0100] Finder -[BRFrameworkContainerHelper br_capabilityToMoveFromURL:toNewParent:error:]: (passed to caller) error: Error Domain=BRCloudDocsErrorDomain Code=6 UserInf

I was reviewing my iCloud settings just now and noticed Phone & FaceTime have an entry there. What sort of data do those sync to the cloud exactly? Is it just the call history? Is it all the contacts? Does anyone know? I was also surprised to see clock in the mix. Is there a way to see what data is in the cloud for a given app?

The deal is my Apple MacBook Pro (2020, M1, 13 inch) with 1TB of storage is running low on space. Most of the space used is photos and videos. So I thought the simplest way to free stuff on the local hard drive would be to put it all on an external drive; I have a few 1TBs laying around. I know the first thing to do, BTW, is a good Time Machine backup. :-) But that said, I wanted to check if there is a relatively simple way to move all the photos - basically the whole photo library - onto an external drive, and when I run phtoos it can run it from there. I know I could get a bunch of iCloud storage and use that too, but I want to have a local backup, and also be able to run Photos without worrying too much about whether my connection is working. I don't mind taping it to the lid or something :-) By the way I am not a sophisticated user of Photos, I haven't used as far as I know any of the advanced file features and honestly never really got fluent with it. I'm just saving photos on the app as I download them from my phone. I am sure there is probably something simple. It's just not a feature/capability I have used yet. I thought to just drag the folder from the one with my username. But I am never sure if the file pathways and links will keep working, sometimes these things get messed up if you aren't careful. This question was almost answered here https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/193035/how-to-backup-export-photos-videos-from-the-new-photos-app-to-an-external-hard-d But the person asking wanted to know about making it Windows-readable, and I am not sure a) that the procedure would be the same, if it is, then no worries b) if it is applicable to OS Big Sur - again if it is, I will try it

I have a large iCloud photo library of about 30,000 irreplaceable images and videos. It is entirely hosted on icloud - I am using the 'optimise iphone storage' setting and have no high res images stored locally on my laptop as the library is too large. I'm getting concerned that iCloud is the only place I have the full resolution images stored and I want to download a backup of the entire library to an external HDD (preferred), or a second cloud service (less preferable) to ensure I have a second copy. I am happy keeping my main library on icloud as it works well for me and allows me to sync all my different devices (iphone, macbook, 2x ipads), I'm just looking to make a second **backup** copy in case something goes wrong. I don't need to use or access these photos under normal circumstance. I can't work out how to do this. The only options I seem to be able to find is to either download 1000 images at a time from iCloud to my external HDD (which is near impossible as I can't work out how to select 1000 at once), or download the entire library to my laptop, then backup from there - which I don't have space for on my laptop (photos library is 250GB, laptop entire SSD is 250GB). I'm not especially concerned about preserving file structure or anything like that, I just want to make sure I have all the images in case anything ever goes wrong with iCloud. What is the most sensible option? I'll pay for 3rd party software if that's the only option, though happy to put in some legwork to do it manually if there is a sensible way to do it. I don't mind manually adding future pics to the backup.

I apparently deleted a message thread over 30 days ago, as Recently Deleted does not contain what I am looking for, however I validated the missing content was present on a device I had offline. After putting that device online and allowing it to sync with iCloud the thread has been deleted. My objective is to restore this thread. I have local iOS/iPadOS and Time Machine backups with this thread. What is the easiest method is to merge this missing thread/content into my current iCloud for Messages database?

On my MacBook, when I navigate to the iCloud directory via Terminal with the command:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents

I see multiple folders related to old iCloud-connected apps that I no longer use or have installed. Most of these folders are empty (0B in size), but they persist in the directory. For example:

ls
27N4MQEA55~pro~writer
3L68KQB4HG~com~readdle~CommonDocuments
57T9237FN3~net~whatsapp~WhatsApp
5U8NS4GX82~com~dayoneapp~dayone
...
iCloud~dk~simonbs~Scriptable
iCloud~fm~overcast~overcast

I’ve attempted to delete them using the following commands:

sudo rm -rf [file/folder_name]

or

find . -type f -size 0 -delete

However, the folders either persist or reappear immediately upon running ls again. Additionally, when I check System Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > “Show All” (linked apps), these apps do not appear in the list of connected services. Apps such as Pro Writer, Day One, Scriptable, and Overcast, which I have no current association with, still appear in the Mobile Documents folder. My goal: I want to clean up the Mobile Documents directory to make it easier to navigate and manage files for currently used apps. Questions: 1. How can I permanently remove these obsolete folders? 2. Is there a way to force a sync reset or clean stale app references from iCloud storage? 3. Could these folders be reappearing due to a macOS or iCloud background process? Any insights or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

I ran into the exact same problem like some other people here. After clean-installing Monterey to my two machines yesterday (MacPro 6.1 and a MacBook Pro 15" Late 2015) my iCloud Drive got stuck syncing on both machines! If I try to copy folders within the folders in iCloud Drive (documents / desktop / etc.)I get this Error: **Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in “” cannot be read or written Error -36** If I click on a folder's cloud icon to download it it says **folder "" can't be downloaded check your internet connection**. But I am online, no ports are blocked. Copying files is not a problem! Just folders. When I deactivate iCloud Drive I can copy folders on my desktop without any problems. The same problem is also documented here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253885938?page=2 **What I did:** - Booting in safe mode - PRAM Reset - Uncheck iCloud Drive couple of times - Killall Bird - Tried everything from this topic https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/264915/icloud-drive-is-stuck-uploading-items-and-no-longer-syncs Nothing worked. **Just deleting the CloudDocs Folder helps for a couple of Minutes**. While it starts resyncing I can copy folders an everything is ok till it finished syncing. Then the problem is back. So what I can do? Would be great to get your help and expertise!

I have been creating an Apple Script that duplicates calendar items from our shared Family iCloud calendar to a work-related Outlook calendar with the same name (different email address). The following script has been iteratively generated with ChatGPT but it has at least 1 syntax error that I can't fix, relating to the apparently non-existent occurrence property of a Calendar.app event in the following line:

-- NOTE: the following line yields a syntax error "Expected class name but found identifier."
set occurrencesList to every occurrence of thisEvent

Can somebody help me out with this script?

-- Path to a file where we store the event UIDs
set uidFilePath to "~/Documents/icloud_event_uids.txt"

-- Create or read the list of already processed event UIDs
set uidFile to open for access (POSIX path of uidFilePath) with write permission
try
    set processedUIDs to read uidFile as text
on error
    -- If file does not exist, create an empty list
    set processedUIDs to ""
end try

tell application "Calendar"
    -- Select the iCloud calendar
    set sourceCalendar to calendar "Family" -- Replace "iCloud" with the actual calendar name if needed
    set eventList to every event of sourceCalendar
    
    -- Access Outlook application
    tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
        -- Select the Outlook calendar (replace with the name of your desired calendar)
        set targetCalendar to calendar "Calendar" -- Replace "Calendar" with the name of your Outlook calendar
        
        -- Get the current date for comparison
        set currentDate to current date
        set thirtyDaysAgo to currentDate - (30 * days)
        
        -- Normalize currentDate and thirtyDaysAgo to UTC
        set currentDateUTC to convertToUTC(currentDate)
        set thirtyDaysAgoUTC to convertToUTC(thirtyDaysAgo)
        
        -- Check for events older than 30 days in Outlook and remove them
        set outlookEventList to every calendar event of targetCalendar
        repeat with outlookEvent in outlookEventList
            set eventEnd to end time of outlookEvent
            set eventEndUTC to convertToUTC(eventEnd)
            if eventEndUTC < thirtyDaysAgoUTC then
                -- Remove event if its end time is older than 30 days
                delete outlookEvent
                -- Remove the UID of the deleted event from the processed list
                set eventUID to subject of outlookEvent -- Use the subject or another unique property to track this
                set processedUIDs to removeUID(eventUID, processedUIDs)
            end if
        end repeat
        
        repeat with thisEvent in eventList
            -- Get the start time, end time, summary, and UID of the iCloud event
            set eventStart to start date of thisEvent
            set eventEnd to end date of thisEvent
            set eventSummary to summary of thisEvent
            set eventLocation to location of thisEvent
            set eventDescription to description of thisEvent
            set eventUID to id of thisEvent -- iCloud unique identifier (UID)
            
            -- Normalize event start and end times to UTC
            set eventStartUTC to convertToUTC(eventStart)
            set eventEndUTC to convertToUTC(eventEnd)
            
            -- Check if the event UID has already been processed
            if eventUID is not in processedUIDs then
                -- Process this event (e.g., duplicate it into Outlook)
                
                -- Check if it's a recurring event
                if recurrence of thisEvent is not missing value then
                    -- Handle recurring event by extracting all occurrences
                    set recurrenceRule to recurrence of thisEvent
					-- NOTE: the following line yields a syntax error "Expected class name but found identifier."
                    set occurrencesList to every occurrence of thisEvent
                    
                    repeat with occurrence in occurrencesList
                        -- Get start and end time for each occurrence
                        set occurrenceStart to start date of occurrence
                        set occurrenceEnd to end date of occurrence
                        
                        -- Normalize occurrence start and end times to UTC
                        set occurrenceStartUTC to convertToUTC(occurrenceStart)
                        set occurrenceEndUTC to convertToUTC(occurrenceEnd)
                        
                        -- Check if the occurrence already exists in Outlook
                        set eventExists to false
                        set outlookEventList to every calendar event of targetCalendar
                        repeat with outlookEvent in outlookEventList
                            set outlookEventStart to start time of outlookEvent
                            set outlookEventStartUTC to convertToUTC(outlookEventStart)
                            if (outlookEventStartUTC is occurrenceStartUTC) and (subject of outlookEvent is eventSummary) then
                                set eventExists to true
                                exit repeat
                            end if
                        end repeat
                        
                        -- If the occurrence does not exist, create it
                        if eventExists is false then
                            make new calendar event at targetCalendar with properties {subject:eventSummary, start time:occurrenceStart, end time:occurrenceEnd, location:eventLocation, content:eventDescription}
                        end if
                    end repeat
                else
                    -- If it's a single (non-recurring) event, process as usual
                    set eventExists to false
                    set outlookEventList to every calendar event of targetCalendar
                    repeat with outlookEvent in outlookEventList
                        set outlookEventStart to start time of outlookEvent
                        set outlookEventStartUTC to convertToUTC(outlookEventStart)
                        if (outlookEventStartUTC is eventStartUTC) and (subject of outlookEvent is eventSummary) then
                            set eventExists to true
                            exit repeat
                        end if
                    end repeat
                    
                    -- If the event does not exist, create it
                    if eventExists is false then
                        make new calendar event at targetCalendar with properties {subject:eventSummary, start time:eventStart, end time:eventEnd, location:eventLocation, content:eventDescription}
                    end if
                end if
                
                -- Append this event UID to the list of processed UIDs
                set processedUIDs to processedUIDs & eventUID & linefeed
                write processedUIDs to uidFile
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

-- Close the file after processing
close access uidFile

-- Function to remove UID from the processed list
on removeUID(thisUID, uidList)
    set textItemDelimiters to linefeed
    set uidListItems to every text item of uidList
    set newUIDList to {}
    
    repeat with currentUID in uidListItems
        if currentUID is not thisUID then
            set end of newUIDList to currentUID
        end if
    end repeat
    
    return (newUIDList as text)
end removeUID

-- Function to convert date to UTC
on convertToUTC(inputDate)
    set timeZoneOffset to (time zone of (current date)) -- Get the current time zone offset
    set utcDate to inputDate - timeZoneOffset -- Convert to UTC by subtracting the offset
    return utcDate
end convertToUTC