Files and folders that you store in iCloud Drive stay up to date across all of your devices, and you can access them from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC, and on iCloud.com.
Before you begin
- Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the latest iOS or iPadOS, and your Mac to the latest macOS.
- Set up iCloud on all of your devices.
- Make sure that you’re signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID on all of your devices.
- If you have a Windows PC, update to Windows 7 or later and download iCloud for Windows.
If you have a device that can’t update to the latest iOS or macOS, see the minimum system requirements to use iCloud Drive.
Get started
Set up iCloud Drive everywhere that you want to access and edit your files.
On your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
- Go to Settings > [your name].
- Tap iCloud.
- Turn on iCloud Drive.
You can find your iCloud Drive files in the Files app.
On your Mac
- Go to Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Apple ID. If you’re using macOS Mojave or earlier, you don’t need to click Apple ID.
- Select iCloud.
- Sign in with your Apple ID, if you need to.
- Select iCloud Drive.
To add the files from your Mac Desktop and your Documents folder to iCloud Drive, turn on Desktop and Documents.
- You can then find your Desktop and Documents folder in the iCloud section of the Finder sidebar.
- If you add a second Mac Desktop, you can find the files in your Desktop and Documents folders in iCloud Drive, in a folder with the same name as your second Mac. The files from your second Mac won’t automatically merge with the files on your first Mac.
If you already use a feature from another cloud provider that syncs or manages your Desktop and Documents folders, you need to turn it off to use Desktop and Documents. Desktop and Documents requires macOS Sierra or later.
On iCloud.com
- Sign in to iCloud.com.
- Select Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.
- Click Upgrade to iCloud Drive, if you are asked to upgrade.
On your Windows PC
After you set up iCloud Drive on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, you can set it up on your Windows PC.
- Go to Start, open Apps or Programs, and open iCloud for Windows.
- Enter your Apple ID to sign in to iCloud.
- Select iCloud Drive, then click Apply.
What’s next
After you set up iCloud Drive, any documents that you’ve already stored in iCloud are automatically moved to iCloud Drive. Your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch keep your files in the Files app in addition to the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps. If you don’t see your files in these apps, they might be on a device that doesn’t have iCloud Drive turned on.
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Want to use iCloud Photos on Mac? In its simplest form iCloud Photos is a sync service that makes sure your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Mac all have every photo you’ve taken, all ready at a moment’s notice. That means you can access the photos from any other device with the feature turned on, so you’ll want to be sure you enable iCloud Photos on iPhone or iPad and you can even enable and use a Windows PC for accessing iCloud Photos, too. It’s incredibly convenient when it works as intended, but you’ll need to activate it before any of that can happen.
This guide is going to run you through the steps needed to get iCloud Photos up and running on your Mac. It isn’t a complicated process, but like everything else, it’s only easy if you know how to do it.
How to Enable iCloud Photos on Mac
Let’s get started enabling iCloud Photos on Mac:
- Click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the screen, and then click “System Preferences.” from the dropdown menu
- Click “Apple ID.” from system preferences
- Find ‘iCloud” in the sidebar and click it.
- Check the mark next to “Photos” to enable iCloud Photos.
- Launch Photos app when finished to see iCloud Photos syncing in progress, once complete all iCloud Photos will appear in the Photos app on Mac (and other devices it’s enabled on too)
That’s all there is to it, iCloud Photos is now enabled on the Mac. The initial syncing process may take a while depending on your media library, so keep the Mac (and iPhone or other devices) turned on and plugged in. You may find that leaving them on overnight is a good way too make sure everything is synced properly to iCloud Photos initially.
Now when you open the Photos app it will use iCloud Photos to sync all of your photos to the cloud.
And yes, iCloud Photos will also sync any videos and movies that are contained in the Photos apps on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
This guide assumes you’re using macOS Catalina or later. With earlier versions of MacOS the steps are basically the same but go to the ‘iCloud’ preference panel instead to enable iCloud Photos.
Some General iCloud Photos Advice
This may be obvious, but iCloud Photos is best used when it’s enabled on all of your Apple devices, so you’ll want to be sure to enable iCloud Photos on iOS and iPadOS too so that photos sync to and from any of your other iPhone, iPad, and the Mac.
Additionally, iCloud Photos performs best on a reliable high speed broadband internet connection, as it transfers a lot of data between your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and any other devices using the same Apple ID. Therefore if you have a slow or unreliable internet connection, you may not want to use iCloud Photos at all as it can be frustrating or too slow to be practical.
Note that the larger the photos libraries are on the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and other devices, the longer the initial iCloud Photos syncing process can take. Therefore it’s best to make sure your devices are connected to the internet and on a high speed connection so that everything syncs, uploads, and downloads as intended.
Finally, you may want to upgrade iCloud storage capacity if you have a very large photos library, so don’t skip that particularly if you see any storage capacity problems with iCloud.
On a somewhat related note, some users discover that large photos libraries can cause some speed issues. Fortunately this is usually temporary and once Photos app has run its course and synced everything between iCloud and all devices and the Mac it should resolve on its own. Nonetheless if you find that your Mac isn’t performing properly and Activity Monitor points to “Photos Agent,” you might want to take a take a look at this for how to deal with Photos Agent for that particular issue if it persists, which basically means disabling iCloud Photos.
Apple is without a doubt a master of making the best of having control over every part of the user experience. It makes the software that runs on the devices it designs, and it builds the hardware it all runs on. It also handles the back-end services that the software and hardware use. And while there are occasional hiccups, it generally works well considering the scale Apple has to work with. And iCloud Photos – previously known as iCloud Photo Library – is a great example of that.
Do you use iCloud Photos on Mac? Do you like to use iCloud Photos to sync photos between Mac and your iPhone and iPad too? Let us know your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
New to iPhone, iPad touch, or iPad and curious how to set up one of Apple’s new, free iCloud accounts? Not only is iCloud great for email, calendar, and contacts, it also lets you backup your important settings and information. Luckily, creating a new iCloud account is a very simple process.
- Open Settings from your home screen
- Click on Mail, Contacts, Calendars
- Click on Add Account.
- Select iCloud at the top of the list
- Click on Get a Free Apple ID
- Enter your location
- Enter your date of birth
- A new window will now open asking you to use an existing email address or get a free @me.com address
- Select get a free @me.com email address
- Fill in all your details and select next
- Accept the iCloud terms and conditions
- That’s it done, you now have a new iCloud account all set up and ready to go on your iOS 5 device!
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