With the first betas of macOS sierra, I discovered a new feature on my laptop I didn’t know it would simplify that much my life: the Desktop is synced over iCloud.
Now, the thing is that my iMac is a early 2009, so for a few month it does not support macOS sierra. Anyhow, there is a way to get your Desktop synced anyway.
Once you set up macOS sierra on a compatible Mac, the folder “Desktop” will automatically sync with iCloud and said folder will appear in your iCloud folder. Now, let’s see how to set up older Macs to get the Desktop also synced.
First, backup your Desktop folder on your “old” Mac. We’ll hace to erase this folder. Simply moving all content to an other temp folder will be fine. At the end you can copy all data back to be synced with iCloud.
Once backed up the folder, shutdown your Mac, and turn it on again in single-user mode (pressing ⌘+s while booting). Afterwards, mount the volume with write permissions with the following commands:
$ /sbin/fsck -fy
$ /sbin/ mount -uw /
Now you will have to run the following commands always replacing <username> with your username:
$ sudo bash
$ rm -R /Users/<username>/Desktop
to become root and delete the old (and empty AND backed up Desktop folder)
$ ln -s /Users/<username>/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Desktop /Users/<username>/Desktop
will create a “new” Desktop folder directly linked to the Desktop folder synced with iCloud.
Now you can restart your Mac typing twice:
$ exit
Once restarted the Mac, you’ll see all the stuff already uploaded from macOS sierra, and you can copy back to the Desktop your old backed up Desktop.