Apps using iCloud

Software
1

I’m getting a new iPhone 12 and was looking through my current iPhone 8 settings. In particular, under iCloud, I noticed that a lot of apps are enabled under iCloud drive. Why would an app need iCloud drive access? The primary reason I can think of is syncing data across multiple devices. However, there are many of them that have their own sync servers. It also seems that there are a number that don’t have sync capabilities but still want iCloud drive access. I’m disabling all of them except for the ones that I know sync through iCloud

  • Can i disable apps from using iCloud by default?
  • Apps that I will enable for sync in iCloud Drive: Deliveries, Devonthink, drafts, notability, PDF Expert etc.
  • Why would apps that have a login to sync data need access to iCloud Drive? Google Drive, Dropbox, Fantastical, OneDrive, Slack, Teams, Asana, Paprika
  • Apps that don’t sync data: Dark Sky, Tabata timer

What other offenders have you seen?

2

AFAIK any app that produces data files like Pages, Numbers, etc. creates a visible folder in iCloud. I’ve always assumed that this default behavior is to encourage the use of iCloud.

And those that do not, but sync via iCloud also create a folder that is visible only if you look it up in the ~Library folder using Terminal. Some years ago I tried to clean up this mess and found that these cannot be delete. So iCloud becomes a permanent record of every app you ever installed

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