Beta7 (19A546d) and iCloud Documents -- mostly vanished?

This is a troublesome issue 😟

Just wait, the iCloud documents will show up again. At least, they did for me...

From the release notes: "After updating to macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta 7 or later, iCloud Drive might synchronize for an extended period of time. If you notice any missing files, they can be found inside a Recovered Files folder in your home folder."

the app-based folders like Pages, Numbers, Preview, and so on ? how long ?

Actually, you are correct! All app-based folders are empty, not just on my Mac, but online as well!

I did not realize this right away, as all files from these app-specific folders are within the above mentioned "Recovered Files" folder within my local home folder on my Mac, still.

While no file seems to be lost (in my case), suddently not having them in iCloud is troubling, indeed.

Slight correction: The Files app in iOS 13.1 beta shows the app-specific folders, but they appear to be empty. If I go to iCloud.com, these folders online still have all the files! Bad enough, but not as bad as it could have been.

I'm in the exact opposite arena. I didn't see any icloud docs until this update. Files on my desktop were absent, along with access to documents, etc. Updated to 19A546d and saw eveything was back. I hope they stay. I could only access these file through iCloud.com or my phone.

On my Mac I have Documents, Desktop, and Downloads in iCloud Drive but all the app-specific folders are gone. No issues on iOS.

I now have the exact same behavior on two Macs--Documents, Desktop, and Downloads are present but no other iCloud Drive folders.

After many days of struggling I finally got my documents to show up again.

What did it was:

• completely signing out of all iCloud accounts
• turning on "Optimize"
• signing in just to my primary icloud Apple ID (not into my different iTunes/Store ID), and
• waiting about 10 hours to see progress (it's still not done and probably won't be for days)

My symptoms were as others have reported in this thread and others: after going from beta 6 to beta 7 no iCloud documents showed up — not Desktop, Downloads, nor app folders like Numbers, Preview, TextEdit etc. All I saw was empty Desktop & Documents folders marked "Waiting to Update" and one file owned by someone else and shared with me.

Multiple attempts did not help: unchecking System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud Drive, Desktop & Documents, Optimize option, multiple reboots and waiting for many hours (a couple of days and overnights).

I don't know if any of these cirmstances were contributing factors: too many files (I have 300+ GB), low disk space (once synced, I expect to have ~50 GB free out of 1 TB), being signed in to my iTunes/Store ID which is different from my primary, trying to sync all at first instead of letting Optimize pick and choose. Maybe the multiple interruptions and reboots put the sync in a stuck state.

One thing I find very helpful in the Finder is turning on List view, then turn on the iCloud Status column, and expand it to see its full description for each file: In iCloud, Waiting to Update, Downloading, Downloaded, progress in bytes, etc. If you sort it by this column you may eventually see the files rearrange as it progresses.

Anyhow, once I did the above, I now see all my files, some of which are still downloading. It looks like it's going to take many days but at least I'm seeing progress.

Just to be clear, when I said "what did it" above, that list is everything I did, but I don't know if they all were relevant. It may have been the complete signout of all accounts that did it alone and turning off "optimize" and not signing into the Store account didn't have any bearing on it working.

Have you run into an endless cycle of "Update Apple Settings" -> sign in w/ the Apple ID password -> "Update Apple Settings" -> sign in w/ the Apple ID password...?

I have an app folder or two that appear empty to Catalina, iOS 13 and the apps themselves, but the documents appear on iCloud.com. The recovered files folder the release notes pointed to were either empty or contained one of hundreds of docments that it should contain. No idea what that's about.

After more than two days, I got my Document and Desktop back, but no other folders such as Numbers, Keynote, Pages, TextEditor, etc.

Same here

Same issue here: Catalina Beta 7 caused iCloud not to update. Strangely also my iOS and iPadOS devices on B3.1 didn't update too. After doing all the login/logout w/o I switched the "optimze Mac Storage" switch on the iCloud settings of Catalina and the iCloud folder on the Mac started to syncronize again. But what was even more strange, was that the sync on my iOS and iPadOS devices stated to work again!

Update Sep 8: Not all files are downloading from iCloud. After some time, there was no further progress. What gave Catalina some push again, was actively starting downloading icloud files on iPadOS. This seems to do something an Catalina is now transfering from iCloud to local storage again.

Some of my files disappeared completely. I have the iCloud sync active.

After some time my desktop folders appear on iCloud and my mac Desktop but there are no files from the last 3 days! I was working on an important project and there is no backup for those files! Can't believe, it's a nightmare for me.

I was able to recover the iCloud folders/files by restoring two of my machines from a backup. Took forever, even with a T1 connection, but the folders/files are now all on my computers. This really shouldn't be the state of affairs for software that is about to go "live." *None* of the previous betas presented this much of a problem. What on earth happened?

Times are changing... This is the worst beta updates that I have seen. My guess is that the principle that says that testing a new version before it is (even beta) released should take more time than functional specs, design specs, and coding together, that principle has not been applied. I used to install betas as they came out, that will no longer be the case in the future.

This seems to have resolved itself in the last two days for me.

Same for you?

I did turn off icloud on my mac and restart my computer and then turned it back on. That didnt immediately seem to fix it but later that day I noticed my files were resyncing

I have the same problem but nothing helped so far. iCloud drive of, reboot, on, reboot... Sign out of everything, reboot, sign in etc. Fix system prefs etc. Desktop stays empty, documents stay empty and in the recovery folder there are only a few items. Far from everything.

Luckely all my documents are still in the cloud and can be accesed on iPhone an iPad.

Beta 8 just came out, can anyone confirm this fixes somthing?

Thanks,

Jonas

Beta 8 brings (for me, at least) the App folders back. I then activated "Documents & Desktop" in iCloud settings, which finally worked (means: it stayed selected), but these folders are now more or less empty. As the data in these folders is still visible in iCloud.com and on my other devices, I assume it will now sync and with a little patience I hope to have all my documents back....

Hi NoComment,

Any luck on the syncing? Beta 8 did the same thing for me. Documents and Desktop stayed selected... but I've been waitin all day and nothing synced up until now. I stil have all the files on iCloud.com and my other devices so nothing is lost... I hope someone finds a routine to follow so items start downloading again and we can see our files back in the right location.

Jonas

I didn't expect it anymore, but finally all the folders and files appeared in my Documents folder in iCloud Drive. Unfortunately, not at the latest version, which I can at least prove for one file that I edited in my "local" Documents folder in beta 7, and I can't find it anywhere on my file system.

But I'm happy that finally all the apps folders are here and Documents&Desktop@iCloud is working again.

Same issue in Catalina Beta 8.

The problem is that it initially extended to all Mac and iOS devices. In short, for ~24 hours I could access iCloud Drive only through Safari.

After downloading a file from Safari (as suggested in other threads) all folders became visible and accessible both on the Mac (Mojave, I did not access the Catalina disk since the onset of the problem) and iOS.

After ~24 hours iCloud folders are still accessible without problems in iOS devices, but I most of them became invisible on the Mac (Mojave), both through the Finder or the specific application (e.g. Keynote).

On the other hand all iCloud folders and files are still accessible through the Terminal (~/Library/Mobile Documents), and files can be opened and saved through there.