Pause/Stop iCloud Drive from syncing

iCloud Drive usually starts syncing immediately after you insert a file in it, the issue starts whenever you’re working (photo/video editing, programming..) on a file or folder and iCloud keeps uploading the file on and on. Or if intend to compress a folder and it has undownloaded media.

Well, the simple solve for that is to add .nosync extension to any file or folder you wish to pause syncing.

However, managing files that has that specific extension is pretty hard, and you can easily forget about it. While working on some project, I had to pause uploading my photos from last weekend, and that’s how I came out with the perfect solution.

I created a couple of Automator apps, connected to each other (just like java methods). Opening the main app prompts a menu to choose an action.

You can download the apps from my Github repository.

(iCloud Tool) Automator app prompt screenshot

It has 4 options:

1. Add NoSync to all files in folder.
2. Remove NoSync on all files in folder.
3. Get all NoSync files in folder.
4. Get all not deleted downloads.

Explanation:

1. Adds .nosync extension to files* in folder, to stop syncing.
2. Removes .nosync extension from all files in folder, to start syncing again.
3. Reveals (in Finder) all files in folder that have the extension .nosync.
4. Reveals (in Finder) all files in folder that are already uploaded to iCloud but still using local storage. You can then right-click all the selected items prompted by this action and select “Remove Downloads” to free local storage.

(iCloud Tool) Automator app finder prompt screenshot

By clicking one of these options, the iCloud Tool.app starts another app to do what you need (nothing will be noticed) and shows a Finder prompt to choose folder/files to take action on.

Note that after you add the extension to any file, it’s then labeled as “Ineligible”.

Conclusion:

As far as iCloud does not have any built in capabilities to pause/stop syncing, I created an Automator app that does that easily. Check my Github repository to get it.

Github repository

Thumbs up guys. :)
Let me know if anything goes wrong, and please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends.

*files: All files in folder: anything that isn’t a folder.