How to Back Up Your Mac to iCloud is not a hard process to go by. All thanks to Apple’s iCloud, keeping your phone up to date and always backed up on Apple’s servers is nearly effortless. Ditto for restoring an iOS device from an iCloud backup. Ditto for restoring an iOS device from an iCloud backup.
iCloud Backup
If you happen to be a mac user, well, it might seem like you are stuck with just a time machine, that only stores backups locally – on an external or a network drive – rather than in the cloud. However, you can make use of the iCloud to back up some of your Mac’s data – it is just that process for doing so isn’t that obvious in macOS.
Unlike iOS, which packs all of your iPhone or iPad Data into a singular backup file, macOS allows you to control which Mac Data you want to store in iCloud. Also, you can choose to store some of that data entirely online in other to help free up space on your Mac’s internal storage drive, much the way iOS allows you to optimize your photo library or offload unused apps without having to deleting anything from your camera roll or home screen.
How to Locate iCloud Settings on a Mac
The settings that you need to back up your Mac Data to iCloud are not that easy to find – they are not available under Time machine settings, and there’s no menu specifically labeled “backup” or “restore.”
To locate your Mac’s iCloud controls, open the Settings app, then click on the internet accounts (That’s where you would go in other to add or delete an email address or choose which accounts you want to sync to your Mac). Once there, the first account that should get listed should be iCloud, which is where you would be clicking on next.
Right under the iCloud settings, you should be able to find a whole Litany of options for various Mac apps and features starting with iCloud Drive, which is where you would find most of the settings that you would need to back up your Mac data to the iCloud. just before you decide to move on, however, take a gander at the remaining settings found on this page and decide whether you want all or some of the data associated with those apps and features to sync with iCloud.
How to Back Up your Mac to your iCloud
Now that you are in the Cloud Settings window, you would be required to make the decision to which data your Mac backs up to iCloud, Each Mac will have a different set of options under iCloud settings, depending on which apps get installed, but the very first one listed is usually the Desktop and Document folder.
This is sort of your all-purpose backup solution – checking this box would sync everything that you place in those two folders with iCloud, meaning all you have to do is to back up a file in either of those locations.
As you scroll down this list, you would be faced with Apple apps that you use – pages, Garage band, etc. – As well as any third-party apps that integrate with iCloud. Checking the boxes next to individual apps saves any of the files you create in those apps to iCloud. That includes program files and game files that allow you to sync app status or game progress across multiple Apple devices.
There are more places where you can get view changes to the files your Mac Backs up to iCloud; however, take note that you can make changes to the settings from this point. For a bird’s-eye view of everything, your Mac is set up to sync with iCloud, launch a finder window, and after that, click on “iCloud Drive” using the iCloud in the sidebar. Alternatively, you can choose to navigate to “/Users/[username]/Library/Mobile/Documents/com-Apple-CloudDocs” (Where [username] is the name of the profile you use to log in on your Mac).
