OS X Yosemite: What is iCloud Drive?

iCloud Drive stores your presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, and other kinds of documents in iCloud so you can access these documents from any of your devices set up for iCloud Drive. It allows your apps to share documents so you can work on the same file across multiple apps.

Mac apps that support iCloud Drive include the Finder, TextEdit, Preview, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, GarageBand, QuickTime Player, and some third-party apps. The Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iCloud Drive apps on iCloud.com also support iCloud Drive, and you can use them from a web browser on any Mac or Windows computer.

iCloud Drive also stores data for Mac apps, and it keeps the data up to date across your other devices set up for iCloud Drive. For example, Safari uses iCloud Drive to store your bookmarks, Reading List, and iCloud Tabs list of webpages open on your other devices. Mail uses iCloud Drive to keep your rules, signatures, flag names, and Smart Mailboxes up to date on your Mac computers that have iCloud Drive turned on. Mail also uses iCloud Drive to keep your VIPs and Previous Recipients list the same on your Mac computers (with OS X v10.8 or later) and iOS devices (with iOS 6 or later) that have iCloud Mail and Contacts turned on.

Your Mac computers must have OS X Yosemite, iOS devices must have iOS 8, and Windows computers must have iCloud for Windows 4.0 (Windows 7 or later required). Your computers and devices must be signed in to iCloud with your Apple ID. If you don’t turn on iCloud Drive on a device, the documents and data on that device aren’t kept up to date with the documents and data on your other devices that have iCloud Drive turned on.

For information about using iCloud Drive on your iOS device, see the user guide for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. For information about using iCloud Drive on your Windows computer, see iCloud Help.