iCloud is losing files

I was programming a new app, when I wanted to reuse some code snipped from one of my old apps. I used the recently opened projects dialog in Xcode, but Xcode failed to open the project and also removed all other projects from that dialog. As I’m storing my Xcode Projects on my iCloud Drive as a first backup (in case my Mac breaks), I headed over to the Finder and found that not only the xcodeproj Container, but also a lot of swift files were missing. I headed over to iCloud.com where deleted files from the past 30 days can be restored. But they were not there either.

Luckily I do run Time Machine (and have most of my projects on GitHub), so I connected my external drive to the MacBook and opened time machine.

As you can see in the TimeMachine view, at some time between end of May and beginning of June a lot of files where lost. I was wondering if I accidentally deleted those files. So I’ve checked other projects. The same picture. A lot of files where missing, some still available. Same for other iCloud Drive data, like my Numbers documents.

Files missing in several locations without any system behind, can’t be explained with accidentally deleted. Somehow iCloud is dropping files which can’t be restored through iCloud.com.

iCloud.com restore files view

iCloud.com offers only 7 recently deleted files, even though more are missing. As seen from before, the files disappeared somehow in the last 14 days, so they should be visible in the last 30 days of deleted files, if they have been deleted manually.

If someone else has the same issue, I would be happy to hear about it.

This is, after Apple removing my desktop background all the time, the second big issue I have with data saved in iCloud.

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