How to make iCloud Drive conveniently available to the shell

Question

For whatever reason, Apple has decided to make "iCloud Drive" actually available at an impossible-to-remember and painful-to-type location.

Is there any better method than a symlink to make it available at (for example) /Volumes/iCloud?

Is there any particular problem putting a symlink in /Volumes? Is it even possible? Will I somehow bork my system if I try it with sudo?

Update

I'm not asking how to create a symlink. That can be boiled down to

sudo ln -s "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs" /Volumes/iCloud

but it leaves all of the app-specific folders out, because $HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs only includes folders and files that you created in the root of the iCloud Drive. All the nifty folders with app icons on them are not there, but instead have equally obscure names up a level in $HOME/Library/Mobile Documents.

Answer 1

Symlinks is the way to go, but it took me several tries to work out the kinks, probably due to the spaces Apple insists on putting everywhere in the directory names and how complicated the cloud drive path is.

Open Finder on iCloud Drive and pick a file.

Right click, press ⌥ (option) key and choose Copy <filename> as Pathname.

Now you have the full file path in your clipboard.

In my case, I took a file called diagram.svg in the root of my documents.

Open a Terminal (I did this with Kitty + zsh, but don't see why iTerm2 or Terminal would not work with bash or zsh).

cd home and Paste your file name. Don't hit Enter

% cd ~                                                                
% ~/Users/me/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/diagram.svg

Now, adjust your command line.

• remove the file name, up to Cloudocs/
• 1️⃣ put quotes around the filename
• 2️⃣ give your desired home/ name. I used icloud, could be anything, preferably without spaces.
• 3️⃣ ln -s in the front to create a symlink.
• 4️⃣ put in your actual username (as it shows in when you type pwd in ~). But you would already have it if you copied the path from Finder.

#     4️⃣      👇 replace `me` with your username, e.g. `jsmith`

ln -s "/Users/me/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs" icloud


#     1️⃣☝️quote it to avoid problems from spaces in the path ☝️1️⃣
#        provide your desired home directory symlink name       ☝️2️⃣                 
#☝️3️⃣ ln -s creates a symlink

Press enter. Now you have a symlink on terminal that you can navigate to with cd ~/icloud.

% cd ~/icloud 
icloud % ls -l diag*
-rw-r--r--@ 1 me  staff  20794 10 Sep  2020 diagram.svg

Way too complicated. Terminal use could be easier with macOS special directories. Lots of things could be easier on the terminal with macOS, looking at you mdfind / Spotlight.

Answer 2

Direct Answer
Yes, you can symlink from /Volumes without issues. I don't know of a technical reason not to. Terminal starts in the home folder by default, so that's probably why it was recommended by others. I agree that the Volumes directory makes sense for iCloud Drive. Symlinking from either or both is fine.

Cloud Paths
The first "iCloud Drive" can access most things (without little pictures). The second is the "Mobile Documents" folder (with little pictures) and contains the extra things visible from Finder looking at iCloud Drive.

Paths:

1. iCloud Drive: $HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs

2. Mobile Documents: $HOME/Library/Mobile Documents

Note: Use $HOME instead of ~ so you don't receive an error when listing. I'm mentioning it here because the lack of function can be misleading.

user@hostname ~ % ls "~/Library/Mobile Documents"
ls: ~/Library/Mobile Documents: No such file or directory

Symbolic Link (symlink)
Link to these paths from anywhere you like.

Symlink from Volumes

sudo ln -s "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs" "/Volumes/iCloudDrive"
sudo ln -s "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents" "/Volumes/mobileDocuments"

Symlink from Home

ln -s "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs" iCloudDrive
ln -s "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents" mobileDocuments

What is Intended from Apple?
Use what's available. For example, TextEdit.app (Text Editor) has an iCloud saving feature that shows up from iCloud Drive as TextEdit with a little picture in the folder. You can open files from here. You can also save files to here (by default) as 1 of 2 options listed under "Cloud Library". The second is iCloud Drive, which includes the same folder and all your other iCloud folders (without the little pictures). In other words, open/save things the easy way.
reference1: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4980973
reference2: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250439086

Alternate Paths:
From Finder, browse to iCloud Drive and then right-click on a special folder (with the little pictures). Then choose "New Terminal at Folder" or "New Terminal Tab at Folder". This opens terminal in the directory's alternate path. Use pwd to see where it is. Here are a few of them:

TextEdit
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~TextEdit/Documents

Shortcuts
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~is~workflow~my~workflows/Documents

Playgrounds
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~apple~Playgrounds/Documents

Controller for HomeKit
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~janandre~HomeKitTimers/Documents

GarageBand for iOS
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/F3LWYJ7GM7~com~apple~mobilegarageband/Documents

Keynote
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Keynote/Documents

Numbers
$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Numbers/Documents