data synchronizationicloudmacos
I have two accounts on my mac. One for fun, one for work, but there is overlap in some of the files I use between the two, so I want to have all files in my Documents folder accessible to both accounts.
For this I figured that if I synced the two mac accounts with the same iCloud account, Documents and Desktop would also be synced. It seems like that is not the case. Does anyone know a way to achieve this?
iCloud does not backup all of your data. It's more a replacement of iWork.com sharing in previous (or current?) versions of iWork. It only works with applications that specifically support iCloud:
If you have the same iCloud-enabled apps on more than one device, iCloud automatically keeps your documents up to date across all your devices. So you don’t have to.
If you visit http://icloud.com and click the ? link, you'll be sent to the help site, which states:
Documents in the Cloud overview
iCloud keeps your documents up to date across all your iOS devices and on icloud.com. Every time you edit a Keynote, Pages, or Numbers document on your iOS device, your changes are automatically available on your other iOS devices set up with iCloud and on the web at icloud.com.
This also explains why the iCloud site does not show a generic documents section in the overview, only iWork. Of course, developers are free to support iCloud in their own applications.
The supported file types are listed here:
You can also drag and drop a new iWork ‘09 (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers) or Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word, and Excel) document from your computer to icloud.com, and then access the document from Keynote, Pages, or Numbers on your iOS device set up with iCloud. Supported file types include Keynote ‘09, Pages ‘09, Numbers ‘09, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, .txt, and .csv.
Just a follow-up on this. I wouldn't say that I have fixed the problem, but closing and opening the Notes app seems to enable syncing again. It continues to stop syncing automatically, however. I am not sure if this happens after wakening the Mac up from sleep, which I do a lot. Nevertheless, restarting the app seems to work so far.
Also, make sure that you are viewing "All Notes" or "Notes" under the "iCloud" section in the sidebar of the Notes app, and not just the notes that are on your Mac locally. This happened to me once because I had hidden the sidebar (drag the edge of the left side of the window to the right to show it again).
It seems to be a bug in the Notes app on OS X, as syncing works fine between iOS and iCloud. For now my solution is to manually restart the Notes app when I want to sync, which sucks, but at least it syncs!
Best Answer
Looks like the approach does work. It just needed a little extra time to get started :)