For those who have been using iCloud from the very beginning, you might’ve remember that Apple introduced ‘iCloud Documents and Data’ at WWDC 2014. Fast forward to May 2021, Apple announced that it would be merging iCloud Documents and Data service into iCloud Drive, which will further streamline how we store essential files in iCloud.
Now that this transition has finished as of this month, Apple has updated its support document, which explains that users will need to turn iCloud Drive on in order to see their files stored in iCloud Documents and Data.
iCloud Documents and Data, our legacy document syncing service, has been discontinued and replaced by iCloud Drive. If you used iCloud Documents and Data, your account has been migrated to iCloud Drive.
If you used the iCloud Documents and Data service, you need to turn on iCloud Drive to see your files. When you switch to iCloud Drive, the amount of storage space your saved files use in iCloud doesn’t change.
To set up iCloud Drive, you will need any of the following devices – iPhone with iOS 8 or later, Mac with OS X Yosemite or later, PCs with iCloud for Windows 7 and later, and on iCloud.com.
As iCloud Drive evolves into a more full-featured syncing service where users can easily access cloud-synced data from any device, whether it’s in the Files app on iOS/iPadOS, the iCloud Drive section of macOS Finder, and the iCloud Drive section of iCloud.com, there’s no longer a need for the aging service.Â
I would have been nice if we were told how to “”turn on” iCloud Drive and how it works with “Files” which I have never figured out how that works (or does’t) with “Documents”.