MacOS 14.4 May Delete Previous Versions of Your Documents
Your Mac saves every version of documents as you work, not just the most recent saves. This way, you can go back to a version of a document you worked on days, weeks, months, or even years ago. This is an underrated feature for those of us who use macOS, but we take it for granted for cloud documents like Google Docs.
To access previous versions of a file, simply choose File > Revert To > View All Versions . This opens a Time Machine-like mode that allows you to scroll through all previous versions of a document and select one to restore. This works whether the document is saved on your Mac or iCloud Drive.
Even if you don’t actively restore previous macOS document saves, you probably don’t want to lose that data unnecessarily. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening now due to a bug in macOS 14.4. As Howard Oakley of The Electric Light Company pointed out , it all depends on how you manage those files between your Mac and iCloud Drive.
When you save a document from, say, Pages to iCloud Drive, you can also save a version of the file locally on your Mac. The beauty of iCloud Drive, of course, is that you can delete local files from your Mac while storing them in the cloud. So, you can click “Remove Download” for the file on your Mac, trusting that the file can be retrieved at any time from your iCloud Drive.
However, as it turns out, when you do this on macOS 14.4 with Optimize Mac Storage enabled, all versions of the file except the most recent save are deleted. When you try to access the file again, you’ll only be able to see the way you left it last: clicking the “Return to” button will still activate Time Machine mode, but won’t show any previous versions to restore.
If you’re currently running macOS 14.4 on your Mac, you can reproduce this error in a program like TextEdit. Create a new file, enter text, save it to iCloud Drive, enter new text and save again. If you go to File > Return To > View All Versions , you will see as many versions of the test file as you have saved. Now go to your iCloud Drive in Finder, right-click on the TextEdit file and select Remove Download . The file will show that it is currently only in the cloud. Open the file you want to re-download to your Mac, then go back to the Return To option, where you won’t find any previous versions to access.
So what should I do?
Since this is only an issue in macOS 14.4, Apple will likely fix the issue in a future update, possibly soon. However, you don’t want to risk losing previous versions.
For now, it’s probably best to avoid saving documents to iCloud Drive, at least those that you don’t want to lose previous versions of. However, if you can save storage space, turning off “Optimize Mac Storage” will also help, as the error doesn’t seem to occur with that feature enabled. You’ll find this option in Settings > General > Storage .