Stop your Mac saving new documents to iCloud by default

You hit Cmd+S in TextEdit, and the sheet that drops down is already pointed at iCloud Drive — not your Documents folder, not the Desktop, iCloud. macOS ships with new documents defaulting to the cloud, and there is one preference that flips it back to your Mac. Set it once and every fresh Save sheet opens locally instead.

The one-line fix

The default is controlled by a single global preference, NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud. Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities) and run:

# Save new documents to your Mac instead of iCloud Drive
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

# Undo — restore the iCloud Drive default
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool true

That is the whole change. The next time an app presents a Save sheet, the initial location is a folder on your Mac — usually the last local folder you saved to, or Documents — rather than iCloud Drive. Nothing already stored in iCloud moves, and you can still choose iCloud from the location dropdown any time you actually want it there.

Why there's no Settings checkbox for this

People go looking for this toggle in System Settings and never find it, because it isn't there. The closest-looking option — System Settings → [your name] → iCloud → iCloud Drive → Desktop & Documents Folders — does something different: it syncs the entire contents of your Desktop and Documents folders to iCloud. Turning that off is a much bigger decision, and it still wouldn't change what a Save sheet proposes for a brand-new file. The save-dialog default lives only in the NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud preference, which Apple never surfaced in the interface, so the Terminal command above is the accurate route on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia alike.

Which apps it changes, and getting them to notice

The preference applies to apps built on the standard macOS document system — TextEdit, Preview, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Script Editor, and most native editors read it. Apps that manage their own file dialogs (many third-party and Electron apps) ignore it and have their own defaults instead. So this cleans up the built-in apps you save to most, not literally everything.

An app reads this preference when it launches, so anything already open won't pick up the change until you quit and reopen it:

1. Run the command above.
2. Quit the app you want it applied to (Cmd+Q), not just close the window.
3. Reopen it and press Cmd+S — the sheet now opens to a local folder.

If you'd rather not close everything, logging out and back in makes every app start fresh with the new default at once.

Keep the two folders local too

If you also want your Desktop and Documents folders to stay entirely on-device rather than syncing, that's the separate toggle mentioned above. See how Desktop & Documents iCloud sync works on Mac to decide whether to leave it on.