How to Stop Pages & Numbers Saving to iCloud on Mac by Default

If you’re someone who uses Apple’s Pages and Numbers apps to work on documents on your Mac, you’d probably know that the files are saved to iCloud by default. Not everyone wants to store these documents on iCloud and this could be an annoyance to some. Thankfully, you can change this in two different ways.

You shouldn’t be surprised that an Apple app prefers to use an Apple service for getting things done. When you try to save a document that you’re working on, whether it’s Pages or Numbers, iCloud is selected as the default location to save the files. If you use a different location for storing your documents, you’ll have to manually change the destination folder every single time you want to save a file. This is not ideal by any means, but there’s a trick to get the apps to stop recognizing iCloud.

There are two ways to go about this. You can either disable iCloud Drive for these apps or use a Terminal command to stop iCloud from showing up in the save menu. Therefore, if you’re interested, we’ll be discussing exactly how you can stop Pages and Numbers from saving to iCloud by default on Mac.

How to Stop Pages & Numbers Saving to iCloud by Changing iCloud Drive Preferences

First, we’ll take a look at how you can change your iCloud settings to make sure iCloud Drive isn’t utilized by Pages and Numbers. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Click on the  Apple menu and choose “System Preferences” from the dropdown menu.
   
   
2. In the System Preferences panel, click on the “Apple ID” option located next to your account name.
   
   
3. This should take you to the iCloud settings menu automatically. If not, select iCloud from the left pane. Next, click on “Options” for iCloud Drive as shown below.
   
   
4. Now, simply uncheck Pages and Numbers from this list and click on “Done”.
   
   

That’s pretty much all you need to do.

How to Stop Pages & Numbers Saving to iCloud by Using Terminal Command

The above method is just one way of doing it. Alternatively, you can make use of a Terminal command to make sure the iCloud destination doesn’t show up within Pages and Numbers while trying to save files. Just follow the steps below:

1. First, you’ll need to launch Terminal. Click on “Go” from the menu bar and choose “Utilities” from the dropdown menu.
   
   
2. This will launch a Finder window on your Mac and take you to the Utilities folder. Here, you should be able to find the Terminal app. Click on it.
   
   
3. Now, simply type in the following command:defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false
   
   
4. You’ll need to restart your Mac for the changes to take effect. If you decide to change your mind and revert these changes to use iCloud for saving files again, use the command below:defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool true
   
   

There you go. You’ve learned two different ways to stop iCloud from being used for saving files in the Pages and Numbers apps.

From now on, when you try to save a file using the Pages or Numbers apps, you won’t find the iCloud option next to the where field. Instead, one of the local directories or folders may be selected for saving the files. You no longer have to manually switch to a local destination every single time.

Although we were focusing specifically on Apple’s Pages and Numbers apps in this particular article, you can utilize these exact steps to stop Keynote presentation files from being saved to iCloud as well. This applies to all of Apple’s cloud-based apps which include iWork productivity software and the built-in TextEdit app.

Having said all that, if you are someone who only uses local saves every now and then, you can learn how to manually change the save location from iCloud to local Mac storage in detail here.

We hope you were able to make use of this procedure to set your Mac to automatically use a local destination instead of iCloud for saving your documents. Which of these two methods did you use? Do share your experiences and feel free to drop your valuable opinions in the comments section down below.