Unlike cloud storage services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, Apple’s iCloud Drive does not have a dedicated status menu bar icon with a “Sync Now” button. It operates silently in the background, relying on macOS to determine the optimal time to upload or download files to conserve battery and bandwidth. However, if you are waiting for a critical file to appear on your Mac or trying to push a document to your iPhone before leaving the house, waiting for macOS to initiate a sync can be frustrating. Fortunately, you can force the system to sync immediately using a terminal command.
How to Force iCloud Drive to Sync via Terminal
macOS manages iCloud synchronisation through a background process called bird. By using the terminal, we can instruct this daemon to immediately process the sync queue.
- Open the Terminal application on your Mac (you can find it by pressing Command + Space and typing “Terminal”).
- In the terminal window, type the following command exactly as written:
killall bird - Press Enter.
Do not be alarmed by the word “kill.” This command forcefully terminates the frozen or sleeping bird process. Because bird is a critical macOS daemon, the operating system will instantly relaunch it within milliseconds. When the process restarts, its first action is to scan the iCloud Drive directory and immediately execute any pending uploads or downloads.
How to Visually Confirm the Sync Status in Finder
If you want to see exactly which files are currently uploading or downloading after you force the sync, you can enable iCloud status indicators in the Finder.
- Click on the Finder icon in your dock.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on iCloud Drive.
- In the top menu bar, click on View and select Show View Options (or press Command + J).
- In the small pop-up window, check the box next to Show iCloud Status.
You will now see a cloud icon next to your files. An outline of a cloud with a downward arrow indicates the file is waiting to download, while a dotted cloud indicates the file is currently waiting to upload. When you run the killall bird command, you should immediately see these icons change to small progress pie-charts as the forced sync begins.