ICloud – Deleted Desktop & Documents Folders from iCloud Drive, but still takes up space

documents-in-the-cloudfindericloud

I uncheck Desktop & Documents Folders from iCloud Drive, and I deleted folders manually from Finder, after I copied them to my local storage in my Mac.

The folders size is around 13 GB.

By the time, there is no folders from Desktop & Documents in the iCloud Drive (accessing from devices and the webpage from iCloud), but there is still 13 GB and I can't do anything about it.

Is there any possibility to free up this space?

enter image description here
enter image description here

Best Answer

I had to leave this as an answer, because it's too long to explain in the comments section. I'm not guaranteeing that your invisible 13GB of files are definitely hanging around in the iCloud trash, but it's just the most obvious first guess that I could think of. So, let's find out:

Open up Terminal and type in this command:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs

That will take you to the local storage folder where iCloud keeps copies of your files on your computer. Type ls to list the files in the directory if you're curious, but it's much the same as navigating to your iCloud folder in Finder.

However, what you actually want to do is see if the iCloud trash is still full of files that are taking up space:

du -d1 .Trash

Hopefully, it'll contain about 13GB of files in it. If this is the case, and you're sure there's nothing in the trash folder you wish to keep, just delete the folder:

rm -R .Trash

This is permanent and cannot be undone. So be sure you're happy to lose those files in the trash.

Then type exit and quit Terminal.

Related Question