Time to Get Organized

About Cloud Storage

In Cloud Storage last October, I introduced several cloud storage providers including iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive and how they might be useful to various personal or professional needs. Let’s add a note about what all this means.

These companies store your data in massive data centers located in various parts of the country or world. Data centers are highly secure facilities charged with making your data available to you instantly without it getting into the wrong hands. Learn more from tech writer David Pogue’s tour of one such facility in Loudoun County, Virginia, in 2017.

All three of these providers currently offer the abilities to (1) synchronize data between their cloud and one or more customer devices, and (2) store data exclusively on their cloud and make it available to customers via a website or application. On each website, you can create, edit, and delete files, as well as organize them in folders.

System Preferences is where you can go to tell your Mac how to behave in alignment with your expectations. You can open it from the Apple menu. By default, the panes are organized in four (or five) categories. From top to bottom: Personal, Hardware, Internet & Wireless, System, and Other.

Dropbox Web App

Once signed into Dropbox, the Home screen is helpful for opening recent files but pretty useless from an organization standpoint. If you know where your files live, click All Files to see your folder hierarchy, if you’ve created one.

Drag-and-drop support is almost nonexistent for organization because there’s no way to see the folder hierarchy together with the current directory listing.

Using the Create New File button, Dropbox currently supports Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files; Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides; as well as its own Dropbox Paper format. Other commands such as creating folders are listed separately on the right.

Google Drive Web App

I find Google Drive a little more logical than Dropbox because Recent is not the default view. The starting place is My Drive. A few recent items appear in Quick Access at the top, but this is mostly for opening them; Quick Access items cannot be dragged.

Also, Google offers a Shared with me area where files may or may not be located in My Drive, so it’s important to move them to My Drive if you want to easily access them in the future. To organize among existing folders in My Drive, you can open this hierarchy in the sidebar and drag items into them.

You can use the big New button with a plus sign in all of Google’s colors to create files and folders. Google primarily offers its Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, plus a handful of other Google objects, and additionally supports integration with dozens of other apps.

iCloud Web App

iCloud apps appear slightly less integrated on its website. File creation occurs by entering the specific apps of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, while organization takes place primarily in the iCloud Drive app.

You can additionally create folders inside the document creation apps but only for organizing each app’s file type. Again, the iCloud Drive app supports general organization of all kinds of files you might store there.

Of course the primary intention is that users mostly use their Apple devices to create and organize. Every Mac and iOS device comes with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, and you can organize using the Files app on iOS and the Finder on macOS.

Mac Syncing Apps

iCloud is deeply integrated into the Mac and you’re probably already signed in and ready to go. Dropbox and Google Drive offer syncing apps that provide access to cloud-stored files, with a dedicated folder in your Home folder where you can use the Finder to organize files in folders. [Update: As of 2023, these apps use a system service called FileProvider to deliver their file stores as a separate volume.]

I find this way more flexible than the web apps. Drag-and-drop is not a native function of a web browser and each company implements it a little differently. On a Mac, the experience of dragging and organizing items is consistent.

When connected to your account, all of these apps show visual feedback to indicate about whether files and folders are in sync with the cloud and/or if they’re stored locally or only remote.

To get the latest Dropbox app, log into your Dropbox account, click your profile menu in the top right, and choose Install Dropbox app. I should mention, too, that Dropbox adds a layer of confusion in their Mac app by offering a window into the web app. I recommend avoiding this and just using the Finder to manage files.

For Google Drive, download and install Google Drive. This app also offers to backup your whole Mac to Google Drive. Since most of my clients are already using Time Machine and/or Backblaze for computer backup, I generally suggest skipping this step when setting up.