iCloud Drive: How to See the Status of Uploads

iCloud

Boy, I sure have been writing lots of tips about iCloud lately. Is it something in the water? Maybe it’s the cycle of the moon? Have I finally lost my mind?

No, no, and yes. But that doesn’t have anything to do with this tip.

So anyway, I’ve been uploading a ton of stuff lately into iCloud Drive. I finally decided that I like it enough to consolidate everything into the Desktop and Documents syncing feature and abandon some other services I’m using. But I’ve been noticing how supremely unhelpful the little pie chart progress indicator is when I’m uploading a large number of files:

The Pie Chart Icon shows file upload progress for iCloud Drive

That icon, available in Finder’s sidebar during an upload, is way less info than I want to have sometimes. But how do you get more? Well, one way is to turn on Finder’s Status Bar, the option for which is under the “View” menu.

Use the Finder's Show Status Bar option to see more information about iCloud Drive file upload progress

When you do that and click on the “iCloud Drive” option in Finder’s sidebar, suddenly you’ll get a lot more information about your uploads.

Finder window Status Bar showing detailed information about iCloud Drive file upload progress

Well, that’s about a billion times more interesting.

I leave the Status Bar on all of the time anyway, as I like how it’ll typically show me the number of items in a folder and the space remaining on the drive I’m looking at.

The Finder Status Bar also shows how many items are in the selected folder and how much storage space is available

In that screenshot, you can see right above the Status Bar that I also have the Path Bar on (View > Show Path Bar). This is helpful if you’d like to have a trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak, leading back within the folder structure you’ve navigated through. Any of the location icons in the Path Bar are double-clickable, as well, to return you to someplace you’ve been. Useful if you tend to drill way deep down into folders and then forget where you came from! Not that I ever do that myself, oh no.

Wait, where am I?

2 thoughts on “iCloud Drive: How to See the Status of Uploads

  • Thanks, Melissa!
    I too, dumped other services and have recently moved everything into iCloud and I must say, it’s not bad! That has been my daily driver now and I have no complaints.

    And this article certainly has helped me a lot because I had the same feelings as you. That really helped! Thanks for the tip!

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