If you want to download all files from iCloud back to the local Mac, here’s what you will want to do:

Getting All Files from iCloud Desktop & Documents Back from iCloud to the Local Mac That’s a bit counterintuitive which is perhaps why it leads some users to believe they have lost their files – but chances are good that you didn’t lose any documents or files, you just have to copy them from iCloud to the local Mac. When you turn off iCloud Desktop & Documents Folders, you’ll find those files are now stored in iCloud rather than locally. ICloud Desktop & Documents will be now be turned off, but you’re not done yet if you want your files to be kept on your Mac. * Note the language in this dialog states the files will be kept on iCloud…. Confirm that you want to disable iCloud Desktop & Documents by choosing “Turn Off” *.

Uncheck the box next to ‘Desktop & Documents Folder’ to disable iCloud Documents & Desktop in Mac OS.

Look for ‘iCloud Drive’ and click the “Options…” button next to it.

Go to “Apple ID” or the ‘iCloud’ preference panel.

Go to the  Apple menu in Mac OS and choose “System Preferences”.

How to Turn Off iCloud Desktop & Documents on MacOS If in doubt, do not change any of your settings. Do not casually enable or disable this feature without understanding the ramifications of any of this. This is very bandwidth intensive and requires a high speed reliable internet connection to use. Disabling this will require you to download every file from iCloud to your local Mac. Even quickly toggling on/off will immediately attempt to upload every single item in your Desktop and Documents folder into iCloud Drive. If you do not want to use iCloud Desktop & Documents do NOT toggle this setting on in iCloud System Preferences on a Mac and then off again.

If you do not have a ton of bandwidth and a very high speed internet connection (and patience), do not casually turn this off and on. Warning: you should have a local backup of all of your files made before proceeding, it is easy to backup with Time Machine. We’ll show you how to turn off iCloud Desktop & Documents on MacOS and then how to get your files back from iCloud and back onto your local Mac again. That can be alarming since it may be incorrectly interpreted as data loss. It’s easy to turn off the iCloud Desktop & Documents feature on MacOS, but in doing so you may find that your files are no longer on your computer.

Automatically backup mac to icloud