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The Documents folder on my Mac (macOS Sierra 10.12 beta) is not visible under my user in Finder. I can see the folder is there through Terminal

But in Finder, I can't see it:

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I can see the folder in Finder under iCloud Drive:

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Please help.

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  • When you say macOS, you mean Sierra, right? Can you specify in your question? Just for clarification.
    – Munesawagi
    Jul 25, 2016 at 2:32
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    Did you turn on the iCloud Drive feature where Desktop and Documents are stored online?
    – NetherLinks
    Jul 25, 2016 at 3:15
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    Yes. I did enable that.
    – systemhalted
    Jul 25, 2016 at 3:23

5 Answers 5

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This is a new feature in macOS Sierra. It allows you to put Desktop and Documents folder in iCloud Drive so you can access it in all of your Mac connected to that account and even iOS devices. You can disable it by pressing Apple Menu -> About this Mac, then go to storage and click Manage under Macintosh HD( or the name of your macOS partition) then in the iCloud part you can turn that feature off.

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  • 6
    Can iCloud folders be unhidden without disabling iCloud sync? Why are they hidden in Finder, but visible in Terminal?
    – 2540625
    Nov 27, 2018 at 18:46
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    There should be a way to solve this without disabling iCloud. It seems overkill to disable that service just so we can find a folder.
    – Mig82
    May 31, 2019 at 11:34
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    I'm very confused about this. Is the Documents folder actually on the local hard drive or just on iCloud?
    – dylnan
    Jul 1, 2019 at 23:46
  • I think it's on both. From terminal you can clearly access $HOME/Documents, so it's still there!
    – a06e
    Sep 1, 2022 at 8:33
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What I did was creating an alias of those folder on the same directory so I can see them from my home folder.

aliases

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    I did this same thing. It works great and I get to keep iCloud enabled. This should be the accepted answer. Creating an alias is also super-simple to do.
    – Mig82
    May 31, 2019 at 11:35
  • What happens when on the terminal you do cd $HOME/Documents?
    – a06e
    Sep 1, 2022 at 8:33
  • It still works.
    – rgkobashi
    Sep 2, 2022 at 9:18
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Check the "iCloud Drive" under iCloud in the Finder window sidebar. There may be a visible Documents folder there.

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  • 1
    this answer helped me finding the folders
    – Naveed Ahmad
    May 15, 2017 at 6:17
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I had the hidden Documents folder too. It showed up in sidebar, but not in my user directory. I had to move all my files and folders within my Documents folder to a different folder, say on my Desktop, then completely delete the Documents folder using Terminal. sudo rm -r Documents/ As soon as it deleted, it was immediately recreated, and now visible. I then just moved everything all back.

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    Your answer helps when you have turn off using iCloud for Documents. I turned it off, play around, and then my Documents were in my home, but when I drag-drop Documents to the Finder bar, it disappeared immediately.
    – hectorpal
    Jun 6, 2017 at 19:39
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While I'm not sure what the reason is (maybe a beta glitch or temporary decision), you should be able to work around it by using the Go To Folder command in the Finder and entering ~/Documents. Then drag it to the Favorites sidebar and you can always access it from there.

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    No need to drag to Favorites. Already there should be both Desktop and Documents in the the sidebar; alongside iCloud, click Show.
    – Graham Perrin
    Aug 13, 2016 at 18:18

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