Many users choose to upgrade their Macs in this Christmas season, and when migrating from one Mac to another, iCloud Drive comes in handy for transferring document and files between two Macs (How To Transfer Files Between iPhone and Mac). However, Howard Oakley from THE ECLECTIC LIGHT COMPANY reported that, if you're moving files from a Mac running Sierra to one running High Sierra via iCloud Drive, your documents, images, and other files might lose some metadata in the process.

He wrote about a peculiar iCloud Drive bug that occurs when transferring files files like images, documents, and whatever else you've got between macOS and iOS devices (What Is Other On Mac Storage). Should you attempt to copy a file containing a particular list of extended attributes that make up a file's metadata from Sierra to iCloud to High Sierra, those meta data are no longer included in the new file on the Mac running High Sierra. Here's a simple test made by Howard Oakley.

A simple test requires two Macs, one running High Sierra 10.13.2, the other Sierra 10.12.6, connected to the same iCloud account, thus accessing a common iCloud Drive. On one Mac – it doesn’t matter which one – take a small text file and paste it a custom icon (App Can't Be Opened Because Apple Cannot Check It for Malicious Software.).

How To Put Your iPhone into Recovery Mode

Original Files With Thumbnail

Keep a copy of that modified file somewhere safe, and copy it across to your iCloud Drive. Once there, it should continue to show the same custom icon to that Mac, using that same version of macOS (How To Import Photos from iPhone to Mac). Then, inspect the same file on the same iCloud Drive on your other Mac, using the different version of macOS (How To Uninstall Programs on Mac).

As a result, not only is the custom icon missed, but the file size is smaller, the same as it was before you pasted in the custom icon (How To Uninstall Chrome Mac). Try copying the file onto local storage, and you'll see that your custom icon has gone for good. In his original post, he also gives more specific examples and you can see it here.

Howard Oakley also pointed out that this "glitch" in iCloud Drive is not like what Apple said in its File System Programming Guide: Apps create files and directories in iCloud container directories in exactly the same way as they create local files and directories. And all the file's attributes are saved, if they add extended attributes to a file, those attributes are copied to iCloud and to the user's other devices too.

If you have met this issue with your iCloud Drive, then leave a message so as to help others to find a reason or solution.



More iPhone/Mac Related Tips


Tags: iPhone News   iTunes Alternative   iPhone Data Recovery   iPhone Photo Recovery