Is there any reason why one should not collaborate on a Dorico project sharing via iCloud Drive? This is assuming the project is not open on more than one computer at a time.
The file is being shared between two different Apple IDs in the same Family group.
Have you ever encountered any ill effect on this practice? I guess it should be similar to using a shared Dropbox (or similar) workspace?
Since we will be working four hands on this project, I hope this will work well since we would like to avoid having to have to send versions of the project back and forth.
Michele,
if you share the file you donât have to send it back and forth.
But: you will always have to check, whether your collaborator is working on the file or tell him or her, that you are working on it. There will need to be an exchange anywayâŚ
I mean, we are in the same room !
I was just inquiring on whether anyone had encountered any issue with working on cloud-shared Dorico files.
From what I see in my iCloud Drive folder, everything seems alright!
This makes it much easier, of courseđ
Still, even as the only person working on a project located on the iCloud one has to take care not to leave the project open, when working on several devices.
I myself have all my Dorico projects on the iCloud. I access them with my desktop computer, when at home, with the laptop, when on the road, and even with an iPad sometimes.
I suspect some issues, when I havenât explicitly saved an closed a Dorico project, whilst continuing on another device. A good thing is, that Dorico works on the same file with version 4 and 5, if playback isnât important.
I havenât used iCloud for essential projects in many years, because it would purge files from my local machine at random. Itâs not a bug but a feature, designed to optomize storage. The files it removed are pretty random, typically files you maybe havenât access after a certain time. I found it the most troubling when it was removing critical software preference files from my documents folders, or audio files I am linked to from a Cubase project for example.
The fix, at that time, was to add .nosync at the end of folders and files, but this not only unsightly but also creates other connection issues with software. I donât know if theyâve changed how this behaves since, however. You can read more about it here, and also any google search will offer lots of results on the topic - mac - Prevent iCloud Drive from removing specific folders - Ask Different
That said I still use iCloud to share photos/videos/PDF scores with my iPad. Just no crucial projects. Perhaps the issue I describe wonât be a problem for you but it put me off from it.
Dropbox is pretty good. Most important for project sharing I have found is a cloud service which uses âblock level sync.â
I have Optimised Storage turned off for my main machine, and I am glad that I now have a big enough internal SSD to allow for that.
I have never saved software preferences inside iCloud Driveâs documents folder and I wonder how you got into it, but yes, it doesnât sound safe. All software preferences should be stored in the Library, which is never shared via iCloud, or anything else.
I can see how I worded that sounds confusing. Itâs because at the time I had my local Desktop and Documents folder synced to iCloud (so Iâm not referring to iCloud driveâs separate documents folder):
Obviously as you can see I have this off now. But when you have this turned on, it will do that automatic purging I referred to.
As for program preferences being stored here, I have long found it bizarre that many programs use the âDocumentsâ folder to store some preferences, presets, and other files which are not actually what I would call documents.
Many plugins use this folder to store presets and settings:
All such folders were placed there by installers and not my own choosing. (I spy Steinberg, Dorico, Adobe, and many plugin companies!). So as a result I would open some projects where presets or preferences would go missing.
Nowadays I honestly let programs have their way with this folder and store my actual documents in a separate folder labelled âMy Documentsâ
More than you needed to know! But the experience left me kind of annoyed with Apple, as I would never actually want it to remove anything locally unless I chose to do so.
Oh! THAT option!
I turned it off a few years ago after I got similar ⌠unpleasantries!
That is a good option for someone who actually doesnât use their computer!!
Indeed, several apps tend to save preferences in the âLocal Documentâ folder.
Adobe saves so many things in several folders where it just should not (Shared, Utilities, ⌠maybe moreâŚ). So much useless garbage from them (Adobe), and such a lack of clarity for what these files/folders doâŚ
Haha yes, exactly to all of that! It appears that audio plugins and virtual instruments also mostly use it for presets (rather than essential preferences) but I had issues in the past when opening projects so I no longer prefer to have it synced with iCloud (now prefer to just back it up).
Also by default Dorico saves projects to this folder, which I guess is fine, people could argue a score project file is a type of âdocument.â But if I still had that iCloud setting turned on Apple would remove Dorico projects at random!
Technically it is not really at random but, assuming there is enough space, only files not opened for 2 weeks or more get evicted, but of course, plenty of exceptions will be found.
Also, this was one of the less told about features of macOS Sonoma: iCloud Drive was transitioned to using the FileProvider framework, which was a huge change, and mostly for good (transition apart!).
This is tangent, but Iâm in the process of moving all my Adobe files (documents, I mean) outside of iCloud Drive down to a local folder which gets daily backups because an SVG export on Illustrator for iPad into the iCloud Dowloads folder totally bricked my iPad to the point I had to restore it⌠Try to guess how many were enthusiastically taking the blame for that?
You definitely know a lot more about this than I do! I havenât made it to Sonoma yet, so thatâs good news.
For me the reason it seemed random is the way some files would be removed in the directory which were used yesterday, whereas older files still sat there. What I have surmised, however, is when I say âused yesterdayâ is they were indirectly accessed from within my DAW or plugin, as opposed to being directly opened from finder. Perhaps that made a difference.
One such issue which occurred for me frequently was with Native Instrumentâs Battery (sample-based drum machine if youâre not familiar). By default, kits and user-saved samples and custom kits are saved within the documents folder (again, go figure, drum kits and samples arenât what I would refer to as documents, but thatâs NI for youâŚ)
As a result, a DAW session Iâd been working on one day, when opened the next day suddenly half the drums in my session would go missing. I noticed in the documents folder I would have to âre-downloadâ them and manually relink in order to hear my drums again. So the reason it seemed random to me is the fact that in this folder, some kits and samples were removed locally, and some not, even though I accessed both of them from the same session⌠but again this is probably something to do with indirect vs direct access (finder-level). Anyway, all I know is that after battling this enough I finally just turned off sync for the Desktop & Documents folders and everything improved after that!
!
