For example, you can open Pages or another iWork app and use the app’s document browser to browse for files stored in iCloud Drive. Instead, you need to use an app that uses iCloud Drive, open its file chooser, and access your file system in that way. IOS 8+: On an iOS device, there’s no single app that exposes the entire iCloud Drive file system like there is for Dropbox and other similar apps. Your iCloud drive files can be accessed from an iOS device, Mac, Windows PC, or any device with a web browser.
RELATED: How to Use App Extensions on an iPhone or iPad With iOS 8 RELATED: How to Free Up iCloud Storage Space How to Access Your iCloud Drive Files They’re tied to your Apple ID, and Apple offers 5 GB of storage space for free. However, you’re free to place files anywhere you like and make your own folder structure.Īs with other cloud storage services, files you store in your iCloud Drive are automatically stored on Apple’s servers and synchronized via your devices. Apple is trying to organize your drive for you. By default, every iCloud Drive-enabled app you use will save its own files to its own folder. iCloud Drive is still a bit weird, though. This changes with iCloud Drive, as Apple has apparently realized that there’s no substitute for an exposed file system that lets you see all your stuff. There was no location where you could go to see all your stuff. On iOS, there was no TextEdit app, so you couldn’t see it. You’d use TextEdit on a Mac to save a text file to iCloud Drive, and that text file could only be seen from within the TextEdit app itself. Previously, Apple’s iCloud “Documents & Data” system was designed to hide the file system from you as much as possible. On a Windows PC, open the iCloud for Windows application and enable it. On a Mac, open the iCloud Preferences window and enable it. To enable iCloud Photo Library, you’ll also need to enable the Photos option here. On an iOS device, open the Settings app, select iCloud, and turn on iCloud Drive. If you didn’t enable iCloud Drive during installation, you can do it later.
After you convert your account to iCloud Drive storage, iOS 7 and pre-Yosemite Mac OS X systems won’t be able to access your files.
This is a one-way upgrade from the old “ Documents & Data” system. When you set up iOS 8 on an iPhone or iPad, or when you set up a Mac with OS X Yosemite, you’ll be asked whether you want to migrate your account to iCloud Drive.