On 4/7 I reported that Qrecall would not back up files stored on iCloud drive, and on 4/9 you replied that that might be because " the iCloud folder is actually a mountpoint . . ." I've now got some new information to add. I'm describing out previous exchange rather than replying to it, because it somehow became part of the first thread in the topic which is locked and not reply-able to.

I happened to glance at the Qrecall Activity Monitor today as it was processing a folder from the iCloud drive, and though "hey, maybe this is working now." After the backup finished, though, I looked in the archive and the iCloud files weren't there. The log does show

Action 2018-05-04 13:56:02 Capturing 3 items
Action 2018-05-04 08:56:20 Capture MBP-HD
Action 2018-05-04 08:56:20 Capture Finances Strauch.scsf
Action 2018-05-04 08:56:20 Capture Meditation stuff

The last two items, Finances Strauch.scsf and Meditation stuff are a file and folder stored on iCloud. I'm sending a report. I can live with this and don't need an immediate fix, but I'm passing it along FYI.

Ralph

Ralph,

Thanks for the update. I've got this on the "to be looked into" list, but haven't gotten to it yet.

And sorry about the thread: the beta announcement topic wasn't supposed to be open for comments, so I locked it after your post.

Ralph,

Thank you for being so patient.

I had a chance to look into this today and I think I understand what's going on. Apple is playing some clever shell game in the Mobile Documents folder, just not the game I thought they were playing.

I have "successfully" backed several iCloud Drive folders and documents here. And by "successfully", I mean that QRecall faithfully captured the iCloud Drive files store on my local "Mobile Documents" folder.

However, this might not be what you expect. Documents in the iCloud Drive folder can be locally cached copy or merely placeholders for a document you have in the cloud. In the Finder, a placeholder appears with a little "cloud" icon next to it, which means it isn't physically stored on your hard drive at the moment.

On you local drive, these "cloud" documents are stored as tiny invisible .icloud documents containing bookmark information about the original.

And sure enough, QRecall captured all of those placeholder files. But, since the files are normally invisible, they do not appear in the QRecall browser unless you turn on "Show Invisible Items". (The Finder obviously knows about these special placeholder finds and displays them as regular files, even though they are invisible.)

If you capture the files, open the archive, and set "Show Invisible Items" you'll see all of the cloud documents that QRecall captured. But, obviously, these aren't the actual documents, just the placeholders, since QRecall doesn't download the shared document from the Internet.

For iCloud documents that are currently cached on your system?the ones that appear without the little "cloud" icon?those are just regular documents and get captured just fine.

James,

Thanks for this information. The iCloud files I want to back up are contained in my ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder, and appear in the archive with "Show Invisible Items" turned on. This assuages my concern that they weren't being backed up. Interestingly, though, when I open that Mobile Documents file in Finder, the title bar reads ""iCloud Drive" rather than "Mobile documents." I don't understand what determines whether the computer keeps a locally cached copies or a placeholders, but this is enough for me for now, at least.

Ralph

Ralph,

The Finder (and probably the Open/Save UI) all know about "ubiquitous" (iCloud) documents and present them as if they were in this special place called the iCloud Drive. The same is true of app-specific documents, like your Keynote documents. In reality, they all live in a special hierarchy inside the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder, which we (being mere users) are not to concern ourselves with.

The rules for when and why a document is stored on your local system or only as placeholder is a complex mix of criteria. Obviously, if you open the document macOS will immediately download a copy. After that, it depend on how big the document is, how fast your network connection is, how often you access that document, how much free space is on your startup volume, and so on.