Guest User Shouldn't Need a Password, Right?

[ekkojelly7]

Did something change in Catalina to make "Guest User" require a password? The Apple help site says "Guests don’t need a password to log in." Yet when I try using it, it does and then a drop down requests Apple ID to change password but won't accept that either.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Apparently another bug in macOS Vista. The solution, according to a discussion on Apple's forums, is to disable the Guest account, then re-enable it.

Guest user locked out in Catalina. - Apple Community

 

[Slydude]

This might explain way I had this problem recently. The fix I read late last night doesn't work. That might have been for Mojave though since it was late when I looked.

I haven't run into the issue under Catalina in any of the betas but until recently I haven't used that feature much.

×

 

[ekkojelly7]

That's the ticket, thanks Lifeisabeach!

Apparently another bug in macOS Vista. The solution, according to a discussion on Apple's forums, is to disable the Guest account, then re-enable it.

Guest user locked out in Catalina. - Apple Community

 

[toMACsh]

Apparently another bug in macOS Vista. ]

Ouch!

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Ouch!

Well hey, I just had to. They have ironed out a lot of the early issues. Or at least I ironed out a lot of mine?

On the other hand, I discovered last night that a substantial number of documents I have stored on iCloud are now 0 bytes in size and I am beyond furious. I don't know if it's an iCloud problem or Catalina jacking it up while syncing/downloading, but I'm about to call Apple about it.

 

[ferrarr]

Where are you getting that "0 bytes" info from? If you're referring to your drive, that's because they are stored in iCloud, so you may need to sign in to iCloud to see the document file size?

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Where are you getting that "0 bytes" info from? If you're referring to your drive, that's because they are stored in iCloud, so you may need to sign in to iCloud to see the document file size?

From iCloud. They really are toasted and no clear reason why. Apple is escalating the matter and will try to determine what happened and see if there is a recovery option over the next few days.

I have a suspicion as to what happened. I was briefly using iCloud Drive to store my Desktop and Documents folder on at least one of the Macs here, but eventually turned it off because it seemed slow or unreliable. I can't recall what put me off exactly, it was some time ago. Anyway, everything that's corrupt is in the "Documents" folder on iCloud Drive, which I've been using to manually copy backups to. I'm thinking that the folder name has something to do with this... it's reserved for use with Macs that keep the user Documents folder on iCloud. Whatever happened, happened months ago because my backups going to November so far, which include iCloud Drive archives, have those same files toasted.

 

[ferrarr]

From iCloud. They really are toasted and no clear reason why. Apple is escalating the matter and will try to determine what happened and see if there is a recovery option over the next few days.

I have a suspicion as to what happened. I was briefly using iCloud Drive to store my Desktop and Documents folder on at least one of the Macs here, but eventually turned it off because it seemed slow or unreliable. I can't recall what put me off exactly, it was some time ago. Anyway, everything that's corrupt is in the "Documents" folder on iCloud Drive, which I've been using to manually copy backups to. I'm thinking that the folder name has something to do with this... it's reserved for use with Macs that keep the user Documents folder on iCloud. Whatever happened, happened months ago because my backups going to November so far, which include iCloud Drive archives, have those same files toasted.

Yeah, that's what a lot of other users have experienced as well.

 

[chscag]

From iCloud. They really are toasted and no clear reason why. Apple is escalating the matter and will try to determine what happened and see if there is a recovery option over the next few days.

Good luck with that. I hope you can recover but I wouldn't bet on it unless Apple has some secret way to recover iCloud deletions. Apple is going to have to take another look at how iCloud is organized and whether or not they can guaranty that stored data is safe. It might be safe security wise, but that doesn't mean anything if the data suddenly disappears or gets deleted.

I only use iCloud for syncing bookmarks, passwords, and contacts. Nothing else.

 

[Slydude]

I only use iCloud for syncing bookmarks, passwords, and contacts. Nothing else.

You mean you don't have the treasure map to the family fortune on there.

 

[chscag]

You mean you don't have the treasure map to the family fortune on there.

Nope. Keep that inside of my mattress.

 

[pm-r]

Apple is going to have to take another look at how iCloud is organized and whether or not they can guaranty that stored data is safe. It might be safe security wise, but that doesn't mean anything if the data suddenly disappears or gets deleted.

It sure as **** wouldn't meet my expectations or even come close to what they describe at their site and how great using iCloud is for safekeeping of one's data.

Having my files disappear would be a lot more "safer" than I would expect or want thank you very much.

Not good Apple...





- Patrick
======

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Good luck with that. I hope you can recover but I wouldn't bet on it unless Apple has some secret way to recover iCloud deletions. Apple is going to have to take another look at how iCloud is organized and whether or not they can guaranty that stored data is safe. It might be safe security wise, but that doesn't mean anything if the data suddenly disappears or gets deleted.

I only use iCloud for syncing bookmarks, passwords, and contacts. Nothing else.

It doesn’t look like anything critical is missing. Mostly what was on there were copies from my iMac that I put on there for convenient remote access.

I think I may have figured out what may have happened, and if so, partly my fault. After all the issues I had with Catalina early on, I wound up making full backups; nuked the drives; clean installed Catalina; then manually migrated my user data back over by cherry picking all my files from across the Home folders and so on. Now, one thing I’m noticing even now is that not everything that’s on iCloud Drive gets downloaded to my Macs. I see placeholders with little cloud badges to prompt me to download them, but they aren’t actually there. Why that isn’t automatic, I have no idea. It seems random. Anyway, what if, when migrating my user data back over before, I copied my Mobile Documents folder, but unknown to me it wasn’t completely synced previously and thus had placeholder “zero-byte” files in place of the correct ones? If so, then I dropped “placeholder” zero-byte files in the new Mobile Documents folder, and those zero-byte files uploaded to iCloud, replacing the originals?

 

[IWT]

@LIAB

I don't think you should beat yourself up over your misfortune. None of us is perfect.

In my view, the tantalising option to save Desktop and Documents Folders to iCloud, and thus space on the Mac's HD, was ill thought out.

It should have stressed loud and clear that cancelling that option deleted your Documents. There should have been constant warnings/reminders that this would happen - and a prompt to "save your Documents back to the Mac in a different place" before removing the option.

So many people have fallen foul of this.

Ian

 

[Lifeisabeach]

@LIAB

I don't think you should beat yourself up over your misfortune. None of us is perfect.

In my view, the tantalising option to save Desktop and Documents Folders to iCloud, and thus space on the Mac's HD, was ill thought out.

It should have stressed loud and clear that cancelling that option deleted your Documents. There should have been constant warnings/reminders that this would happen - and a prompt to "save your Documents back to the Mac in a different place" before removing the option.

So many people have fallen foul of this.

Ian

Oh I’m totally not beating myself up on this. I don’t know if this is how it even went down but even if it did, it’s a consequence of how poorly Apple has implemented iCloud as a service. It’s truly awful and confusing.

 

[ferrarr]

Apple is going to have to take another look at how iCloud is organized and whether or not they can guaranty that stored data is safe. It might be safe security wise, but that doesn't mean anything if the data suddenly disappears or gets deleted.

Stored data is safe, except from user (data owner) error.

 

[pm-r]

It should have stressed loud and clear that cancelling that option deleted your Documents. There should have been constant warnings/reminders that this would happen - and a prompt to "save your Documents back to the Mac in a different place" before removing the option.

So many people have fallen foul of this.

Ian

But ian, i'm afraid to say that would be so logical and not really "geeky" enough. Then some users would be complaining that their Mac is nagging them, especially after the theoretical optional feature to disable it was removed with a recent macOS update.





- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Apple does try to tell people how it works.

Add your Desktop and Documents files to iCloud Drive - Apple Support

In that article it says

When you turn off Desktop & Documents Folders, your files stay in iCloud Drive and a new Desktop and Documents folder is created on your Mac in the home folder. You can move files from iCloud Drive to your Mac as you need them, or select all of your files and drag them to the place you want to keep them.

From your Mac, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences. Click Apple ID, then click iCloud. On macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click iCloud.
Next to iCloud Drive, click Options.
Deselect Desktop & Documents Folders.
Click Done.
If you turn off iCloud Drive or sign out of iCloud, you have the option to keep a local copy of your files that are in iCloud Drive. Whether you decide to keep a local copy or not, a new Desktop and Documents folder is created in your home folder. If you choose to keep a local copy, your files in iCloud Drive are copied to a folder called iCloud Drive (Archive) in your home folder. Then you have the option to move any files that were in your iCloud Desktop and Documents, back to your new local Desktop and Documents.

What Apple cannot do is to force people to read about how their machine works. Of course, if they did manage to find a way to accomplish that, then this forum would have no reason to exist...

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I think there’s some confusion. My situation isn’t from having once used and then stopped using iCloud for Desktop and Documents. Well the folders stayed, but that’s besides the point. I didn’t lose what was “originally” in that Documents folder when it was serving the purpose of being my MacBook Air’s user Documents folder. After I stopped using that option, I simply started using that folder as a generic one to store files for sharing between by Macs and devices. My concern is that Apple treats it differently based on its name, even though FUNCTIONALLY it’s no longer tied to the home folder of a user of any particular Mac. As I said, it appears that at least some of the contents of this folder and only this folder aren’t auto syncing across my Macs and devices, even though I’m not using the iCloud “Desktop and Documents” option anymore, anywhere. I double checked to be sure.

edit: for extra clarity... when I say it isn’t “auto-syncing”, I don’t mean syncing to the user Document folders on my Macs. I mean the Mobile Documents folder in the user Library that is the local copy of the iCloud Drive contents.