CCATP #764 — Adam Engst on Mac Cloud Storage Changes

Adam Engst of TidBITS joins me on Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite to talk about the changes Apple made recently to the File Provider Extension. These changes had a fairly significant effect on how cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box work with macOS.

Whether you realize it or not, you've very likely been upgraded to new versions of these services. While the new File Provider Extension improves several things about our interface with these cloud storage providers, there are also some serious "gotchas" that may affect you.

For example, before talking to Adam, I didn't realize that the change caused us to have local copies of our entire Google Drive and anything added there isn't being synced to the could. Being Adam, he's written an extremely well-researched and well-explained article on [tidbits.com/...](https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-mac-cloud-storage-changes/) where you can follow along with our conversation.

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript: CCATP_2023_04_13

During the conversation, Adam referenced a couple of other articles:

* Adam's TidBITS article from February 2022 predicting these problems: Cloud Storage Forecast Unsettled, with Possible Storms - TidBITS

* LucidLink is a better alternative for people who used to use Dropbox as a cloud service provider for huge, shared video files LucidLink Offers Streaming Vision of Cloud-Based Storage

* Adam and I said at the end of the conversation that the next time we'd talk it would be about doing clean installs of macOS. He sent me this link where he talks about three levels of clean installs: Level 2 Clean Install of Ventura Solves Deep-Rooted Problems