Where to find iCloud items

If you are using iCloud Drive without putting  Desktop & Documents Folders  into iCloud, your own iCloud Drive folders will be found in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs, which is the set starting location for the iCloud Browser. This roughly corresponds to the top level of iCloud Drive as seen in the Finder and the  Open…  command in Cirrus. However, macOS adds other folders which are actually located in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/, which you may also want to browse.

If you have enabled  Desktop & Documents Folders  as well as using iCloud Drive, those folders don’t include your Documents and Desktop folders. There are several ways to locate those, including following the symlink placed in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs (useful for Documents only, as no symlink is created for Desktop), or by opening those folders from the top level of your Home folder. This can become extremely confusing, particularly because of discrepancies between what is shown in the Finder and  Open… , and what is shown in the iCloud Browser. This is all part of the new illusion created by macOS with iCloud.

log window  (not El Capitan)

test your iCloud

how Cirrus works

oddities, and more information

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