OS X Mountain Lion's Documents in the Cloud Simplifies File Access Across Devices

One of the major new features in OS X Mountain Lion is greater integration with iCloud, with one of the additions being new Documents in the Cloud functionality. As noted by John Gruber, the feature expands significantly on the existing feature that allows limited syncing and transfer of iWork documents across their iOS devices and Macs.

iCloud document storage, and the biggest change to Open and Save dialog boxes in the 28-year history of the Mac. Mac App Store apps effectively have two modes for opening/saving documents: iCloud or the traditional local hierarchical file system. The traditional way is mostly unchanged from Lion (and, really, from all previous versions of Mac OS X). The iCloud way is visually distinctive: it looks like the iPad springboard — linen background, iOS-style one-level-only drag-one-on-top-of-another-to-create-one “folders”. It’s not a replacement of traditional Mac file management and organization. It’s a radically simplified alternative.

mountain lion icloud documents
iCloud Documents in Pages (Source: Pocket-lint)

Apple is of course already extending this functionality beyond iWork in OS X Mountain Lion, with the iCloud file storage showing up in other apps such as TextEdit. Apple is also releasing APIs to allow third-party apps to take advantage of the feature.

mountain lion icloud document textedit
iCloud Document within a folder in TextEdit

The functionality is naturally being compared to that of Dropbox, which allows users to save files directly to their Dropbox accounts for access anywhere, but Apple's new iCloud solution offers the advantage of displaying only those files intended for use with the app being used, helping to filter the list of documents and offering iOS-like folder organization of files.

Popular Stories

airpods pro 3 purple

New, Higher End AirPods Pro Coming This Year

Tuesday January 20, 2026 9:05 am PST by
Apple is planning to debut a high-end secondary version of AirPods Pro 3 this year, sitting in the lineup alongside the current model, reports suggest. Back in September 2025, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is planning to introduce a successor to the AirPods Pro 3 in 2026. This would be somewhat unusual since Apple normally waits around three years to make major...
iOS 27 Mock Quick

iOS 27 Will Add These 8 New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday January 18, 2026 3:51 pm PST by
iOS 27 is still many months away, but there are already plenty of rumors about new features that will be included in the software update. The first beta of iOS 27 will be released during WWDC 2026 in June, and the update should be released to all users with a compatible iPhone in September. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that iOS 27 will be similar to Mac OS X Snow Leopard, in the sense...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

MacBook Pro Buyers Now Facing Up to a Two-Month Wait Ahead of New Models

Sunday January 18, 2026 6:50 pm PST by
MacBook Pro availability is tightening on Apple's online store, with select configurations facing up to a two-month delivery timeframe in the United States. A few 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro configurations with an M4 Pro chip are not facing any shipping delay, but estimated delivery dates for many configurations with an M4 Max chip range from February 6 to February 24 or even later. At...
smaller dynamic island iphone 18 pro Filip Vabrous%CC%8Cek

iPhone 18 Pro Leak: Smaller Dynamic Island, No Top-Left Camera Cutout

Tuesday January 20, 2026 2:34 am PST by
Over the last few months, rumors around the iPhone 18 Pro's front-panel design have been conflicted, with some supply-chain leaks pointing to under-display Face ID, reports suggesting a top-left hole-punch camera, and debate over whether the familiar Dynamic Island will shrink, shift, or disappear entirely. Today, Weibo-based leaker Instant Digital shared new details that appear to clarify the ...
iPhone Top Left Hole Punch Face ID Feature Purple

iPhone 18 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 12 New Features

Thursday January 15, 2026 10:56 am PST by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are not expected to launch for another eight months, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we have recapped 12 features rumored for the iPhone 18 Pro models, as of January 2026: The same overall design is expected, with 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch display sizes, and a "plateau" housing three rear cameras Under-screen Face ID...

Top Rated Comments

vettori Avatar
182 months ago
Let us access this 'shared' cloud space from third-party iOS apps and it will be a big thing.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AdeFowler Avatar
182 months ago
I'd like the iCloud version to get simultaneously saved to my local disk in case my internet goes down.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dethmaShine Avatar
182 months ago
Makes me wonder if they're getting rid of Terminal.app too...

NOoooooooOOOOOO
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Bubba Satori Avatar
182 months ago
Apple is soo moving in the right direction.

It's just great.

And if you can't access the Cloud or have bumped into a data cap?
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ugahairydawgs Avatar
182 months ago
Anybody with a copy of this....is iCloud still limited to just iWork files only? My biggest gripe so far is that you can't use it for other file types (most notably PDFs).
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macrumors12345 Avatar
182 months ago
Very exciting

But I wonder how well it will work for those of us who organize our files by project rather than by application...
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)