Recover Deleted Files from iCloud Drive (Archive) on Mac How I Accidentally Deleted My Mac Files and Got Them Back (iCloud Drive Archive Recovery) We’ve all been there—clicking something too quickly and instantly regretting it. Recently, I turned off iCloud sync on my Mac, clicked on the option to remove files , and boom —everything from my Documents and Desktop folders vanished. Worse? Only the folders were synced to iCloud, not the actual files. So when I looked inside iCloud, there was nothing useful to restore. For a moment, I thought I had lost everything. But luckily, macOS had my back. Here’s how I recovered all my files, and how you can too if you ever face this scary situation. Where Do Deleted Mac Files Go When iCloud Sync Is Turned Off? When you turn off iCloud Drive sync on macOS and choose to remove files, macOS doesn’t immediately delete them forever. Instead, it moves them into a local folder called: ...