How to exclude a sub folder from iCloud drive in macOS Sierra?

Question

I have my Documents folder synced with iCloud drive, I want to exclude some sub folders from the iCloud drive is there a way to achieve this?

score 77 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '23 at 09:28

77

Update 2022

This method doesn't work anymore. you need to change the directory name to *.nosync, as described in other answers.

Adding one empty file named .nosync to a folder will prevent that folder from syncing.

You can also use this as a file extension to specific files, but the folder treatment is quite useful.

Once you've had a folder sync, you can now also prevent it from syncing on some (or all endpoints) with a utility named Bailiff, if for some reason you don't want just to delete the files from iCloud entirely and instead want to prevent the next "initial" sync.

https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/

edited Apr 17 '23 at 09:28

informatik01

113

answered Nov 17 '16 at 18:57

Nebula

1,096

8

what if you put a hidden .nosync file in the folder will that also stop the folder from syncing? – malhal Aug 19 '17 at 17:03
It works! Brilliant! It does indeed stop the folder. Even after the fact. I just tried it. +1 from me – bjbk Aug 22 '17 at 01:37
2

I want to avoid syncing a "build" folder too. In that case, I cannot change the name of that folder. – John Pang Jan 07 '18 at 09:31
Finally! I've dropped an empty iCloud.nosync file (don't like invisible files) into every folder I don't want in iCloud --mainly because my trusty old BBEdit crashes every time I try to open or search one of them cloud files. Works instantly, peace has returned. – Elise van Looij Jan 11 '18 at 18:18
5

This is not really accurate. The directory continues to sync up when a .nosync file is added; additionally, iCloud even seems to behave like the contents of the directory are uploading, and may even take up space, though I don't want to risk losing space that will never return, as I've seen many reports of space never de-allocating. The directory will show up in iCloud, though appears empty. In Finder, the .nosync file will be deemed "inelligible," but all the other files are considered "Downloaded." This is is disconcerting. Compare: https://i.imgur.com/uYybYAK.png – danemacmillan Jul 09 '18 at 17:12
4

This didn’t work for me. I created an empty file called .nosync in the folder but everything else in the folder still synced. I created some new files in the folder and they were uploaded to iCloud Drive. I’m using Mojave. – Nate Nov 08 '18 at 05:11
1

I can confirm that putting a .nosync inside a folder is NOT reliable as iCloud is still uploading new content. The only working solution is putting « .nosync » into the name of the folder, which unfortunately is kind of dirty... – Tlokuus Feb 25 '19 at 17:44
2

2019-07-12 - this no longer seems to work. I have tried it on High Sierra (10.13.6) and Mojave (10.14.5) and even with .nosync files on each Mac, new content continues to sync. A sub-folder named "test.nosync" does not sync, nor do files which end with .nosync. But that's obviously less than ideal. – TJ Luoma Jul 12 '19 at 19:38
1

This did not work. – delphirules Oct 09 '19 at 17:29
did not work me either ☹️ – Foad Mar 25 '20 at 10:41
2

I would like to see something like ".icloudignore" file where I can list files and folders (with wildcards) which should be ignored. That's unfortunate it's not supported :\ – Jerry Green Jul 04 '21 at 06:00

malhal · Answer 2 · 2018-07-09T10:46:42.443

56

Here are all the file/folder names excluded so maybe one of these could be used for a workaround:

Filename:

is .DS_Store
begins with (A Document Being Saved
contains .nosync (in any case)
is .ubd
contains .weakpkg
is tmp (in any case)
is .tmp (in any case)
is desktop.ini (in any case)
begins with ~$
is Microsoft User Data (in any case)
is $RECYCLE.BIN (in any case)
is iPhoto Library (in any case)
is Dropbox (in any case)
is OneDrive (in any case)
is IDrive-Sync (in any case)
is .dropbox (in any case)
is .dropbox.attr (in any case)
is icon\r (in any case)

Extension is (in any case):

tmp
photoslibrary
photolibrary
aplibrary
migratedaplibrary
migratedphotolibrary
migratedaperturelibrary

Extension is more than 2 chars and filename is ~

Source: reversing iCloud daemon.

Hopefully in a future version of the OS they let us put .nosync inside the folder to exclude it, or have an .IgnoreList like Resilio has.

edited Jul 09 '18 at 10:46

answered Aug 21 '17 at 22:52

malhal

2,092

3

That's helpful, but can you please also add a source to your answer? – mklement0 Jan 09 '18 at 13:12
2

iCloud Drive also excludes symlinks ("aliases"). – twhb Jul 09 '18 at 20:09
Can anyone help me with the same for windows? Excluding a file from syncing with .nosync works, but this does not work for folders... they continue to sync normally. – Fernando Crespo Jun 23 '21 at 13:28

score 23 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 05 '18 at 03:59

23

Rename the folder or file:

mv fileorfolder fileorfolder.nosync

Create a symlink that get's synced:

ln -s fileorfolder.nosync fileorfolder

Repeat on every machine.

answered Sep 05 '18 at 03:59

Appyx

330

Nice one! Works with Magento 2.3.2, excluding paths 'var/cache', 'var/session', 'var/view_preprocessed/pub/static', 'pub/media/catalog/product/cache', 'pub/static' gonna save a lot of battery life! – Maciek Rek Dec 02 '19 at 19:02
this worked for me. Also mentioned here – Foad Mar 25 '20 at 10:44
2

Brilliant!!! And if you have node/npm you can add this as a single command with https://github.com/HaoChuan9421/nosync-icloud – Jan 23 '21 at 03:54
1/2: This (extremely useful) hint still works only a slight asterisk:
When I used this approach on two Macs with Big Sur, the symbolic link I created on the first Mac was synced via iCloud to the second Mac, and it was pointing to exactly the same path as on my first Mac. On the second Mac, I had deleted the config file I was using this workflow for, so when I opened the app, it created a new someConfig.nosync file, just like I had set it up on my first Mac.
– NSSynapse Feb 15 '22 at 09:28
2/2: Long story short, it looks like the "Repeat on every machine" part no longer works/applies, because at least currently, the symbolic link is synced via iCloud so running the ln -s command on a second Mac would either fail or overwrite the existing symbolic link. – NSSynapse Feb 15 '22 at 09:28

score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 24 '21 at 11:27

12

Adding the .nosync file to the directory is not working anymore.

The directory has to be renamed to contain .nosync. Moreover, according to this thread on Reddit, it should be possible to chain the words like my_file.nosync.noindex to not only mark file as not-to-sync but also to hide it from Spotlight.

answered Mar 24 '21 at 11:27

pdaawr

221
2
5

I confirm, it's not working anymore – sonique Jun 18 '21 at 23:40

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 28 '20 at 18:06

10

Node developers: To add an empty file named .nosync to every node_modules subfolder, run this shell script from a parent directory:

find . -name node_modules -exec touch {}/.nosync \;

answered Sep 28 '20 at 18:06

Jon Wilson

201

2

Very useful, thank you! I did combine it with -prune though, so that only those node_modules folders that were not themselves a sub-folder of another node_modules were targeted, which I discovered here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/582634 – shuckster Apr 12 '21 at 09:25
this worked for you? definitely not working for me today.. ;( – Someone Special Nov 23 '21 at 13:01
You are correct, Someone Special, this no longer prevents syncing, as documented in many other comments on this page. The best solution might be from Appyx now. You could probably combine my idea with that one to automate it.... – Jon Wilson Nov 23 '21 at 18:39

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 05 '19 at 18:43

4

I created this Automator workflow to do it from the context menu in Finder https://github.com/tsdexter/iCloud-NoSync

answered Feb 05 '19 at 18:43

tsdexter

141

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 08 '16 at 02:42

3

It looks like directories that are named "tmp" or end with ".tmp" are not synced. A cloud icon with a line through it appears next to the directory along with anything inside of it.

answered Oct 08 '16 at 02:42

oddmouse

31

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 08 '21 at 16:41

The answer that worked for me really well was added as a comment above (https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/335629/117233), but for the sake of being thorough, I thought to add the actual code.

The way it worked for me was the following:

Delete the folder you don't want to sync (or rename it if the content isn't auto-generated, e.g. node_modules)
run the following in the parent directory of the above:

mkdir NAME_OF_FOLDER.nosync && ln -s NAME_OF_FOLDER.nosync NAME_OF_FOLDER

Then copy your content to the NAME_OF_FOLDER.nosync folder.

Hope it helps.

let's assume you have a react/angular project that you are working on which is located under the documents folder, now you want to sync everything except the node_modules folder. how to achieve that.? Will react/angular recognise 'node_modules.nosync'.? — Pradeep, Sep 17 '22 at 00:39

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 11 '22 at 17:41

0

You can, if you want to say exclude node_modules, make a dir/node_modules in an unsynced folder, move the files there, then create a symlink to that folder where the original node modules were. All code will run the same except iCloud sync which excludes symlinks.

.nosync doesn't work for this because node_modules must be called node_modules and should also not ever be synced.

edited Oct 11 '22 at 17:41

agarza

2,274

answered Oct 11 '22 at 15:57

John Targaryen

101

score -3 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 06 '18 at 04:57

-3

I just create folders directly under my user home that I want to keep only locally (separate from my iCloud folders).

answered Aug 06 '18 at 04:57

Peter Nosko

103

How to exclude a sub folder from iCloud drive in macOS Sierra?

10 Answers10

Update 2022

Linked