Missing folder from iCloud Drive

First of all, “the most recent operating system”, which you mention in your post, is macOS Golden Gate, which was released by Apple on September 14, 2026. But since you mention macOS Tahoe 26.6.2, there’s a contradiction. So I guess you did your macOS update some time ago.

Secondly, your Mac’s files are preserved on your Time Machine backups. (You do use Time Machine, right?) Here’s how to restore them from the Mac User Guide.

Recover files using Time Machine and Spotlight on Mac - Apple Support

vjwylie wrote:

No, I didn't think I needed to do a backup to a hard drive because I had iCloud.

Beware that iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos is NOT a backup but a sync service. I.e. any mistake you make is synced to other devices and the fix is to correct that mistake from the backup done with Time Machine or 3rd party apps like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.

iCloud is not a backup service. It's a synch service to keep files synched across devices. If a file is deleted on one device it's deleted everywhere. Contrast that with a backup where a copy of the file is made and stored somewhere where it's not used or updated and can't be easily deleted. You should be making backups of your important and irreplaceable stuff. If you rely on iCloud to do this then at some point you will lost some important and irreplaceable stuff for ever.

Start doing regular backups using Time Machine or an app like CCC. Once you've got in the swing of it then do a web search for "321 backups" and up your game.

vjwylie wrote:

No, I didn't think I needed to do a backup to a hard drive because I had iCloud.

But in your original post you said:

”… it removed a bunch of folders and files from my computer's desktop and uploaded them to iCloud …”

So you knew these ‘really important files” were not housed in iCloud for that period of time.

No backup, even from then? Oops …

No, you misunderstand. The folders were originally on my desktop and had also been backed up to iCloud Drive. When the OS updated, the folders were condensed into a folder on my desktop labeled "Desktop-Macbook Air." That is an iCloud Drive folder that had not existed before. I never did a backup to an external hard drive because I have everything synced to iCloud, so I thought that was unnecessary. There was never a time when the folders were not housed in iCloud, or so I thought.

So when my phone, for example, says "back up to iCloud," it's lying? Does this mean that when those folders were condensed into the larger "Desktop-Macbook Air" Drive folder, the folder I'm looking for just got deleted?

Phone and iPad backups are an exception to the icloud-is-synch-not-backup point. But note that if you backup your phone to iCloud only items not synched with iCloud are backed up. So if, for example, you synch photos using iCloud then those photos are not backed up to iCloud when you backup your phone.

I've no idea what happened to your folder.

Thank you for explaining that. It was not clear from the perspective of a not-very-tech-savvy person. This is very disheartening. Hopefully I have the files in an older hard drive somewhere, even if they are older versions. Thank you everyone for your help.

No, I didn't think I needed to do a backup to a hard drive because I had iCloud.