iCloud's 'Optimize Storage' silently evicted 69 files, halting a developer's publishing for 4 days
A developer's automated publishing system went dark for four days starting August 3, 2026, after macOS quietly evicted 69 local article files to iCloud under its 'Optimize Storage' feature. When disk usage hit 98%, macOS deleted local copies of files stored under Desktop and Documents, leaving them in a 'dataless' state invisible to automation scripts. All affected scripts exited with status 0, meaning the system registered no errors — it simply found no files to process, masking the failure entirely. Attempts to read dataless files returned EDEADLK (errno 11), a POSIX code macOS repurposes to signal a pending remote download rather than an actual deadlock. The incident highlights a critical risk for developers running automated workflows on machines with iCloud Drive enabled, as any folder synced to iCloud is vulnerable whenever disk pressure triggers storage optimization.
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