Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

iCloud Drive

Truth is, “cloud” is an annoying buzzword. Most of the time, when people say “in the cloud,” they mean “online” or “on the Internet”—terms that have served us perfectly well for years.

In any case, you can save your files online, into an online “hard drive” called iCloud Drive. The advantage here is that your files are now available for opening or editing from any computer or gadget you use, including iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches.

iCloud Drive Defined

iCloud Drive is like a magic folder. In the Finder, it’s represented by an iCloud Drive icon () in the Sidebar of every window.

Whatever you put into it appears, almost instantly, in the iCloud Drive folder on all your other machines: Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Windows PCs. In fact, your files will even be available at iCloud.com, so you can grab them even when you’re stranded on a desert island with nothing but somebody else’s computer. (If this concept reminds you of the popular free program Dropbox, then you’re very wise.) Figure 10-9 shows the idea.

This is an incredibly useful feature. No more emailing files to yourself. No more carrying things around on a flash drive. After working on some document at the office, you can go home and resume from right where you stopped; the same file is waiting for you, exactly as you left it.

Figure 10-9. Left: The iCloud Drive icon appears in the Sidebar of every Finder window and ...