How to force iCloud files on iPhone to download

Maybe you could say one is built on top the other. But that’s not saying much because, as I understand it, there are lots of ways to use CloudKit. And CloudKit itself is a feature packaged and offered to developers that is built on lower-level cloud technology. And perhaps you’ll be able to recall how many times Apple has taken a stab at cloud technology. And then guess at what a mess their legacy cloud technologies must be. :slightly_smiling_face:

I don’t know how much you know about software architecture and development, so my apologies in advance if the following seems condescending - I’m not trying to be.

CloudKit is a software “framework”, which is a bunch of functions and other software artifacts that are bundled together to attempt to help the programmer solve a particular kind of problem. Other examples are UIKit, SpriteKit, and dozens of others. The particular problem that CloudKit attempts to solve is to let the programmer interact with “the cloud”, in this case iCloud.

It’s my understanding, and I could certainly be wrong, that iCloud Drive was originally built using some of that legacy software you referred to, and then later rewritten to use CloudKit instead. If this is correct, there is no distinction between “iCloud Drive or CloudKit” - they’re both CloudKit (which was my point originally).

I have no doubt, however, that there are non-CloudKit or hybrid implementations out there, so in that sense your original statement is still valid.

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I am the one with least knowledge on this forum when it comes to cloud technology. All I know (from users’ perspective) that DEVONthink migrated from legacy cloud sync to Cloudkit and it seems to be better.