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This is an issue I didn't even know was possible...

I moved a bunch of directories over to iCloud to back them up. These directories had a bunch of subdirectories, many of which have subdirectories, all of which have lots of files.

My flow was as such: copy over, then wait for iCloud to say that it has been fully synced. Then on the parent directory, I right clicked and chose "Remove Download," which presumably removes the local copies recursively. The cloud with a little down arrow appeared, which presumably means that everything has been synced remotely and removed locally...

Except I realized that somehow, there were still a bunch of subdirectories that hadn't been removed locally. In some cases, a subdirectory would register as having been removed locally (it had the cloud with the down arrow) but when I looked inside of it, there would be folders or files that hadn't been removed locally. This is frustrating, because it seems like if the cloud with the down arrow is there iCloud thinks that all of the subdirectories/files have been removed...you cannot select "remove download" even though not all of the files have been removed!

So I had to very tediously crawl the subdirectories myself, looking for unsynced files and directories, and right click and select "remove download." This is super tedious! We are programmers, after all! This shouldn't be necessary.

So I'm wondering if there is a programmatic way to remove files locally? Maybe a way to surface all of the files/directories that haven't been removed locally? There has to be a better way than "recurse the file hierarchy myself looking for folders or files that don't have the cloud with a down arrow then right click and do remove download." Is there?

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A workaround might be to -1- download them all. Then -2- it's possible to right-click and select "Remove Downloads".

Unfortunately, there is no attribute for a search in Finder on their download status afaik.

I use Disk Inventory X to list the large ones I forgot.

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