

It’s worthwhile only if your Mac’s internal drive is nearly full. If you have plenty of storage, leave Optimize Mac Storage unchecked. But that may be too much effort for many.įirst off, make sure iCloud Drive is selected in System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud.
Icloud drive install#
Windows users can instead install iCloud for Windows to access it in Windows Explorer. Such people can get a free iCloud account if they create an Apple ID and then access iCloud Drive in a Web browser. The main reason not to use iCloud Drive Folder Sharing is if the people with whom you want to share documents aren’t Apple users. Why pay one of the other services another $9.99 per month-$240 per year-when you can get the same capabilities using iCloud? (Dropbox used to be entirely usable at its free level for those who didn’t need much shared storage, but users at that tier are also limited to just three devices, rendering it problematic for anyone with an iPhone, iPad, and desktop and laptop Macs.) Say you’re already paying Apple $9.99 for 2 TB of storage so you can use iCloud Photos with a large library. Why use iCloud Drive Folder Sharing instead of the more established services? Cost is the main one. With iCloud Drive Folder Sharing, you can share an entire folder, complete with permissions that control what your collaborators can do with the contents of the folder.

Before then, you could share a single file in iCloud with another iCloud user, but nothing more. Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive all have their place, but as of March 2020, Apple users no longer have to venture outside the Apple ecosystem for online folder sharing.
