How to exclude a sub folder from iCloud drive in macOS Sierra?

Solution 1:

Adding one empty file named .nosync to a folder will prevent that folder from syncing.

You can also use this as a file extension to specific files, but the folder treatment is quite useful.

Once you've had a folder sync, you can now also prevent it from syncing on some (or all endpoints) with a utility named Bailiff, if for some reason you don't want just to delete the files from iCloud entirely and instead want to prevent the next "initial" sync.

• https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/

Solution 2:

Here are all the file/folder names excluded so maybe one of these could be used for a workaround:

Filename:

• is .DS_Store
• begins with (A Document Being Saved
• contains .nosync (in any case)
• is .ubd
• contains .weakpkg
• is tmp (in any case)
• is .tmp (in any case)
• is desktop.ini (in any case)
• begins with ~$
• is Microsoft User Data (in any case)
• is $RECYCLE.BIN (in any case)
• is iPhoto Library (in any case)
• is Dropbox (in any case)
• is OneDrive (in any case)
• is IDrive-Sync (in any case)
• is .dropbox (in any case)
• is .dropbox.attr (in any case)
• is icon\r (in any case)

Extension is (in any case):

• tmp
• photoslibrary
• photolibrary
• aplibrary
• migratedaplibrary
• migratedphotolibrary
• migratedaperturelibrary

Extension is more than 2 chars and filename is ~

Source: reversing iCloud daemon.

Hopefully in a future version of the OS they let us put .nosync inside the folder to exclude it, or have an .IgnoreList like Resilio has.

Solution 3:

Rename the folder or file:

mv fileorfolder fileorfolder.nosync

Create a symlink that get's synced:

ln -s fileorfolder.nosync fileorfolder

Repeat on every machine.

Solution 4:

Node developers: To add an empty file named .nosync to every node_modules subfolder, run this shell script from a parent directory:

find . -name node_modules -exec touch {}/.nosync \;

Solution 5:

Adding the .nosync file to the directory is not working anymore.

The directory has to be renamed to contain .nosync. Moreover, according to this thread on Reddit, it should be possible to chain the words like my_file.nosync.noindex to not only mark file as not-to-sync but also to hide it from Spotlight.