Using iCloud as a Dropbox: A Workaround for Transferring Files Between Macs and PCs

If you're looking for a way to transfer files between your Mac and PC, but don't want to use iCloud Drive on your iOS devices, this workaround might be just what you need. The process is a little more in-depth than simply transferring files to Dropbox, but it's still a convenient way to share files with others.

To get started, open up a web browser and navigate to icloud.com. Log in to your iCloud account, and then click on the iWork app icon. You might be wondering if you need to have Keynote, Pages, or Numbers installed on your Mac or iOS device - the answer is no. This workaround doesn't require any of those apps, and it's perfect for transferring files between Macs or PCs.

To use this method, open up a file that you want to transfer to iCloud. Normally, you would say that you can upload iWork documents, Microsoft Word documents, or plain text files - but with this workaround, you'll be compressing the file first. Right-click on the file and select Compress, which will create a zipped file. Then, rename the file by adding ".txt" to the end of the name (e.g., "image.txt"). This may seem like a pointless step, but trust us - it's necessary.

Once you've renamed the file, click on the gear icon in the corner and select Upload Document from the dropdown menu. From there, look for your desktop and find the compressed file with the ".txt" extension. Select that file, and iCloud will upload it to your account. You can see this process happening right before your eyes - just hit Choose and wait for a few seconds.

When you go back to icloud.com later, you'll be able to see all of your uploaded files in the Documents section. If you open one of these files on an iOS device that has Pages installed (such as an iPad or iPhone), it will automatically recognize the file type and allow you to edit it - but if you open it on a Mac, it won't work at all. However, if you log in to icloud.com from another computer, you'll be able to see this file again and download it for editing.

To demonstrate how this works with more than just images, let's try uploading a movie file as well. We'll follow the same process: compress the file by right-clicking and selecting Compress, rename the file by adding ".txt" to the end (e.g., "movie.txt"), and then upload it to iCloud. As we wait for the upload to complete, note that you don't receive any visual warnings about how much space you have left in your iCloud account - this can be a problem if you're not careful! In fact, you only get 5 GB of free storage to start with, so make sure you keep an eye on your usage.

Once the upload is complete, we can download the movie file back to our Mac. Go to icloud.com and select the document that was uploaded earlier - it should be downloaded automatically in the Downloads folder. If you rename the file by removing the ".txt" extension, we can uncompress it and access the original file.

One of the benefits of this method is that you don't have to perform this step for every single file - if you upload an entire directory full of files at once, you won't need to compress each individual file separately. This makes it a convenient way to share large collections of files with others.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone this is Michael from c ma here and today I'm going to show you how you can upload any file you want right to iCloud so as of now Apple has really tight restrictions on what you can and cannot do with iCloud U apps can use it just to transfer files and data between you devices and things like that but you really can't use it as a Dropbox and a lot of people complained about that because they liked the concept of idisk and they like Dropbox and you really can't do that kind of stuff with iCloud but I found this little workaround that you can actually upload any file that you want right to iCloud so in this case today I'm going to show you both an image and a video but you can also do this with audio and PDFs I've tried both of those and even full directories full files so really any file you want will work it's a little more in-depth than if you just transfer something to Dropbox but if you just like using iCloud it's a really handy way that I'll show you today and although it doesn't work with your iOS devices you won't be able to transfer your files to them it does work between Macs or even PCS so it's pretty neat so the first thing you're going to have to do is open up a web browser and in this case Safari and you want to go to icloud.com and log in so once you're in iCloud you're going to click on the ior app right here and you might be wondering here oh no do I have to have keynote Pages or numbers that I I work Suite No you don't have to have any of that you don't have to have it on your Mac or on your iOS device we're just going to use it uh because it's what facilitates the transport of files to iCloud so when you go to upload a document from this iWork panel normally we would say you can upload either iWork Microsoft Word documents orain text so this workaround takes advantage of that so what we're going to do is do this image first I'm going to upload this right to iCloud so if I right click on it I'm going to want to click compress so now that you have this compressed file you're going to want to rename it and in this case we're going to put txt on the end hit enter and it's going to give us this little dialog box and we're going to select use. txt so now we've turned this image essentially into a zipped file and then a text document and if you look at it you can see that it's all just jumbled up text it's really meaningless you might think you've corrupted the file but you actually haven't and this is where iCloud comes in I can go back over to Safari here and I can hit this little gear icon in the corner hit upload document and from there I'm going to look on my desktop and right there is the file you can see it's plain text you can hit choose and since it identifies it as text it will upload it right to iCloud there it is in my documents now this also show up on pages for iOS if you have it but you won't be able to do anything with it there if you open it it'll give you an err so what you can do though is if you log in to any other computer and you go to icloud.com you'll be able to see this and in here and this is where it acts like a Dropbox cuz I can select this file I can hit download and hit text it's going to download it's only going to take a couple seconds here and now I'll be able to go into the finder go to my downloads folder and here you can see that same file is I've just downloaded off iCloud now all I have to do is rename it back to what it was so if I take off the txt hit use. zip and all I have to do is unzip the file and you can see there's my image so it's a little bit of a workaround and it's a little bit messy but essentially you've just use iCloud as a Dropbox and I think it works pretty neat so to show you how you can do this with more than just images I'm also going to show you this movie here and uh it works pretty well as well so once again I just compress it and add txt to the end and we'll upload it and I'll show you exactly how it turns out so I hit the gear I hit upload and I can upload my video right to iCloud now while this is uploading I just mention that because you don't really receive any visual warnings about how much space you have left it's easy to fill up iCloud if you do it this way because you only get 5 GB free to start with so now we've uploaded this I can download this too and it's going to download the movie I just uploaded so now this is downloaded I can go into my finder window again I can go to my downloads folder and here we go again and I can just rename this so this would be really nice if you just uploaded a entire directory full of files as you wouldn't have to do this for every file and it still works the same and you can see it works so you can see that it actually did work and I just transferred a video over iCloud so that's how you can upload any document to iCloud and use it as a drop box and I think it's really neat so if there's anything that you'd like to see me do a howto on make sure to send me an email hope we found this video useful thank you for watchinghey everyone this is Michael from c ma here and today I'm going to show you how you can upload any file you want right to iCloud so as of now Apple has really tight restrictions on what you can and cannot do with iCloud U apps can use it just to transfer files and data between you devices and things like that but you really can't use it as a Dropbox and a lot of people complained about that because they liked the concept of idisk and they like Dropbox and you really can't do that kind of stuff with iCloud but I found this little workaround that you can actually upload any file that you want right to iCloud so in this case today I'm going to show you both an image and a video but you can also do this with audio and PDFs I've tried both of those and even full directories full files so really any file you want will work it's a little more in-depth than if you just transfer something to Dropbox but if you just like using iCloud it's a really handy way that I'll show you today and although it doesn't work with your iOS devices you won't be able to transfer your files to them it does work between Macs or even PCS so it's pretty neat so the first thing you're going to have to do is open up a web browser and in this case Safari and you want to go to icloud.com and log in so once you're in iCloud you're going to click on the ior app right here and you might be wondering here oh no do I have to have keynote Pages or numbers that I I work Suite No you don't have to have any of that you don't have to have it on your Mac or on your iOS device we're just going to use it uh because it's what facilitates the transport of files to iCloud so when you go to upload a document from this iWork panel normally we would say you can upload either iWork Microsoft Word documents orain text so this workaround takes advantage of that so what we're going to do is do this image first I'm going to upload this right to iCloud so if I right click on it I'm going to want to click compress so now that you have this compressed file you're going to want to rename it and in this case we're going to put txt on the end hit enter and it's going to give us this little dialog box and we're going to select use. txt so now we've turned this image essentially into a zipped file and then a text document and if you look at it you can see that it's all just jumbled up text it's really meaningless you might think you've corrupted the file but you actually haven't and this is where iCloud comes in I can go back over to Safari here and I can hit this little gear icon in the corner hit upload document and from there I'm going to look on my desktop and right there is the file you can see it's plain text you can hit choose and since it identifies it as text it will upload it right to iCloud there it is in my documents now this also show up on pages for iOS if you have it but you won't be able to do anything with it there if you open it it'll give you an err so what you can do though is if you log in to any other computer and you go to icloud.com you'll be able to see this and in here and this is where it acts like a Dropbox cuz I can select this file I can hit download and hit text it's going to download it's only going to take a couple seconds here and now I'll be able to go into the finder go to my downloads folder and here you can see that same file is I've just downloaded off iCloud now all I have to do is rename it back to what it was so if I take off the txt hit use. zip and all I have to do is unzip the file and you can see there's my image so it's a little bit of a workaround and it's a little bit messy but essentially you've just use iCloud as a Dropbox and I think it works pretty neat so to show you how you can do this with more than just images I'm also going to show you this movie here and uh it works pretty well as well so once again I just compress it and add txt to the end and we'll upload it and I'll show you exactly how it turns out so I hit the gear I hit upload and I can upload my video right to iCloud now while this is uploading I just mention that because you don't really receive any visual warnings about how much space you have left it's easy to fill up iCloud if you do it this way because you only get 5 GB free to start with so now we've uploaded this I can download this too and it's going to download the movie I just uploaded so now this is downloaded I can go into my finder window again I can go to my downloads folder and here we go again and I can just rename this so this would be really nice if you just uploaded a entire directory full of files as you wouldn't have to do this for every file and it still works the same and you can see it works so you can see that it actually did work and I just transferred a video over iCloud so that's how you can upload any document to iCloud and use it as a drop box and I think it's really neat so if there's anything that you'd like to see me do a howto on make sure to send me an email hope we found this video useful thank you for watching\n"