Mac – Latest WhatsApp Desktop from App Store crashes on High Sierra

iCloud preferences seem to be spread across a few different plist files. The main one (funnily enough) seems to be called /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/MobileMeAccounts.plist. That's the one that stores your account details (ID, UUID, DSID and AlternateDSID) and information about the services you have enabled or disabled.

You could try closing System Preferences entirely, renaming that file temporarily, restarting your Mac and then seeing if System Preferences can then open its iCloud pane.

I encountered this problem many times, and I found today that it's caused by lack of disk space.

In my machine there is more than 7GB spare space, and after downloading the files, it reported this error.

Today I find the real problem from /private/var/log/install.log, it is caused by low disk space, so I made more space, and the update succeeded.

Since the download is 6 GB you'll want to delete old versions and have at least 15 GB free space before trying again to download. Look in /var/folders for paused / stuck downloads as well as perhaps cleaning any local time machine snapshots once you delete a large app like Xcode. Even after emptying trash, it will consume space for a few days or longer if you don't regularly have a Time Machine volume attached to let the snapshots age out.