iCloud Drive Changing Empty Files
iCloud Drive servers recently started reverting all 0 byte files to the last non-empty version. Not a problem for most apps, but all plain text editors now have a bug where it’s impossible to remove all content from a file.
It looks like this has now been fixed, but it’s still scary. Aside from messing up user editable text files (where the problem might be obvious—or not, depending on when you last used the file), the modified files could have semantic meaning for an app, which then misbehaved or corrupted other data as a result.
Most certainly working around some iCloud bug that emptied files by itself.
I still have zero bytes files that I lost from Catalina beta. Checked now and they’re still empty. Would love for Apple to restore them because I have no backups of files in iCloud Drive.
Previously:
Update (2020-02-14): Maciej:
This is what one of 13.3.1 betas did to my iCloud main directory. Correct folders were properly displayed below that. Nothing seems to have been lost though.
I simply avoid iCloud Drive at all costs for any machine or data that is important to me. I only have it enabled on two devices that are used exclusively for development and testing, using an Apple ID that is used only on those machines. I've lost too much time and effort to iCloud over the years.