For the past few months, I gave iCloud Drive a shot at being my
"files in the cloud" service. Today, I've stopped using it. Again.

I say "again" because this is the second time I've tried using
iCloud Drive. The first time ended terribly, with lost files and
months of working with Apple Support. I gave it some time to let
them iron out the kinks (iCloud Drive was still pretty new at that
time) and decided to try it again.

The good news is I didn't lose any files this time. However, after
months of using it, there are just too many little annoyances for
me to continue using it. Here are the things I found wrong with or
annoying about iCloud Drive, ordered from least annoying to most.

iPhone asks for my password, or at least a separate pin, to get to
the files. iCloud Drive is wide open for anyone who can unlock my
phone. I thought I would like the ease of use of not having to put
in a password to get to my files, but honestly I miss the extra
bit of security.

mobile app.

pretty much all the other cloud drive services have a way to share
a file to anyone via a link. iCloud Drive does not.

no convenient way of getting to the files outside of that sidebar
icon, unless you make your own way. The iCloud Drive sidebar entry
takes you to to a folder in your user's Library directory (hidden
in Finder by default). Unless you memorize the directory hierarchy
to get to it, or give yourself a shortcut/alias/link, you'll have
a difficult time getting to your iCloud Drive files from Terminal.a
and others. It's definitely inconvenient.

get duplicate files. This usually happens with my password manager'
auto-backup feature. If I have a password database called passwords
then open that in my password manager, it will create a file called
passwords.db~ that is a temporary backup of anything you've done
that isn't saved yet. That way, if the program crashes, you shouldn
lose any work. The issue is, iCloud drive was causing multiple
backup files to be made:  passwords.db~, passwords.db~2, passwords.
etc. Very annoying. Even it flat out duplicated my password databas
a couple of times. My best guess it that it just doesn't handle
lots of saving to the same file very well. I don't know what else
it could be.  Also, before you think it's just an issue with my
password manager, since that's both of the examples I gave earlier,
let me say that it has also occurred with my financial software
and other programs as well.

There might be other issues that I've forgotten or haven't noticed
yet, especially with the iCloud Drive iOS app. However, this is a
good overview of the things I found most consistently hindering.
Perhaps I'll give iCloud Drive a third chance in the future. For
now, though, I'll stick with ownCloud.