Navigate the iCloud Website

When you visit the iCloud website, you see fields for entering your Apple ID and password, an optional Keep Me Signed In checkbox, and a few informational links at the bottom.

Once you are signed in, keep in mind just a few things:

• Opening apps: On the home screen that appears after you sign in (Figure 24), click an app’s icon to go to that app (or, if you prefer, press the arrow keys to move between icons and press Return or Enter to open the selected one).

  

• Switching or closing apps: Click the current app’s name in the upper-left corner (or press Shift-Esc) and then click the name of another app (Figure 25). Or, to return to the home screen, click the app’s name and then click Launchpad.

  

• Settings and signing out: On any screen of the website, click your name at the top to display a pop-up menu that lets you view account settings or sign out.

• Finding help: Click the ever-present Help icon in the upper-right corner. A separate window with help appears (Figure 26). This help is actually helpful. I mean, it’s no Take Control book, but seriously, it’s not bad. A table of contents appears in a sidebar on the left; if you don’t see it, make the window wider or click the Table of Contents icon in the Help window’s upper-left corner. Or, to search the help, click the Search icon in the upper right.

That introduction out of the way, let’s take a quick spin through each of the web apps.

The Mail Web App

The Mail web app doesn’t approach the full capabilities of Apple Mail in macOS, but it’s quite similar to Mail in iOS (and, in fact, more powerful in some respects). Here are a few of the highlights:

• View a message: Click any message in the list; its contents appear in the preview pane. Or double-click a message in the list to open it in a separate window.

• Message actions: The icons at the top of the screen can be used to reply/forward, flag, delete, move, and compose messages. You can also drag messages to other mailboxes to move them.

• Sidebar: iCloud Mail’s sidebar lists your mailboxes, but it may be hidden. If you don’t see it, click the tiny right arrow button at the top of the message list display it; click the left arrow to hide it. However, if the sidebar isn’t showing, you can drag a message from the message list to the left to file it elsewhere—the sidebar will open temporarily while you drop the message into a new location.

• Keyboard shortcuts: iCloud Mail has many keyboard shortcuts; to see a list, visit this help page.

• Mailboxes and folders: For reasons I can’t comprehend, iCloud Mail uses the term “mailbox” for the built-in mailboxes such as Inbox, Sent, and Trash; but it calls user-created mailboxes “folders.” You can add, delete, or rename folders as needed. Although you can move a folder into or out of another folder, you can’t reorder folders, at any given level, by manually dragging them. However, since folders are sorted alphabetically, you can customize their order by using a little creative renaming.

• Preferences: iCloud Mail has many preferences you can adjust. To do so, click the gear icon in the sidebar, choose Preferences, and then click a category (such as General or Composing).

• Aliases: Your iCloud account comes with an icloud.com email address, but you can also configure up to three aliases—extra icloud.com email addresses that deliver messages to your main account. To set these up, click the gear icon in the sidebar, choose Preferences, and click Accounts. The left side of the Accounts pane lists any aliases you’ve already set up. To add one, click “Add an alias.” To disable one, select it and check Disable Alias, or you can delete it permanently (and irrevocably) by clicking Delete.

• Rules: iCloud can run server-based rules on incoming messages—for example, filing them in specific mailboxes based on their sender or subject. Even though most desktop clients can do the same thing, iCloud Mail’s rules can sort messages before they appear on your iOS device—which overcomes, to some extent, the lack of a rules feature on these devices. iCloud Mail’s rules are far less powerful than Gmail’s, but they’re still quite useful. To set up rules, click the gear icon in the sidebar and choose Rules.

The Contacts Web App

The simple Contacts app is straightforward, but I want to point out two less-obvious items, both located at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar:

• Gear menu: Click the gear icon to display a menu with commands for Preferences, Import vCard, Export vCard, and other useful controls.

• Add a contact or group: Click the plus icon to display a menu with New Contact and New Group commands.

The Calendar Web App

You can manage appointments, meetings, and other events online in the Calendar web app, which looks and acts much like Calendar on a Mac or iOS device. I want to point out a handful of important features:

• Sharing: To share a calendar or change the settings for an already-shared calendar, click the Share icon next to it. (I say more about this in Sync Your Calendars.)

• Gear menu: Click the gear icon in the lower-left corner of the window to display a menu with important controls, such as Preferences, New Event, and New Calendar.

• Calendar list: Click the Calendar List icon at the bottom of the window to show or hide the sidebar containing a list of your calendars.

• Notifications: Click the Notifications icon at the bottom to display notifications such as events added by someone else sharing your calendar and meeting replies.

The Photos Web App

Use the Photos web app to view and work with the items in your iCloud Photo Library, albeit to a more limited extent than in the Photos app for macOS or iOS. Some of the key things you can do are:

• Download photos, add them to an album, or delete them. Select one or more photos (you can hold down Command to select multiple photos), and then click an icon at the top of the window (such as Download , Add , or Delete ).

• Mark a photo as a favorite. Hover over the photo’s thumbnail, and click the heart icon that appears in its lower-left corner. Or, if the photo is open, click the heart icon at the top of the screen.

• Upload a photo. You can upload new photos (in JPEG format only) by clicking Upload at the top of the window. (You can’t upload videos to the web app.)

• Work with albums. If the sidebar is visible, find your albums there; if not, click the Albums button at the top of the window. Select one or more photos and click the Add icon to create a new album or add photos to an existing album. When viewing an album, you can remove a photo from it by selecting the photo and clicking the Delete icon.

The Notes Web App

Like the Notes app in macOS and iOS (see Work with Notes), the Notes web app offers these capabilities:

• To apply a style (your choices are Title, Heading, Body, Monospaced, Bulleted List, Dashed List, Numbered List, Bold, Italic, or Underline), click the Style icon to display a popover with style controls.

• To turn the selected paragraph(s) into a checklist, click the Checklist icon.

• You can add other people to a note (allowing them to collaborate in editing the note) by clicking the Add People button.

Although the Notes web app can display attachments, URLs, and other text styles created with the Notes app on other platforms, it currently offers no way to add those attributes. It also offers no way to lock notes with a password, as you can in the macOS and iOS versions of Notes.

The Reminders Web App

The simple Reminders app is easy to work in. One feature that you may not find obvious is that if you want to share a reminder list (see Use Reminders), you must click its Share icon (which is quite dim until you hover over it).

The iWork Web Apps

The three iWork for iCloud apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) represent a remarkable piece of engineering, because they include the majority of the capabilities of the iOS and Mac versions of the apps—and all inside a web browser. If you’ve used iWork on either of the other platforms, you’ll find the web app versions similar.

To learn more about any of these apps, click the Help icon on its Document Manager page, choose Get Help, and then (if necessary) click the Table of Contents icon.

The iCloud Drive Web App

The iCloud Drive web app lets you view your files and folders. You can use the icons at the top of the page to create folders and to upload, download, delete, and email documents; you can also rearrange items using drag and drop. If you double-click a Pages, Numbers, or Keynote document, it opens in the corresponding web app.

The Find Friends Web App

This web app can be used to locate friends who’ve shared their locations with you and is quite similar to the iOS version I describe later in Find Your Friends; refer to that topic for details.

I do want to point out a few things about the web app, however:

• When you open the Find Friends web app, your browser may prompt you for permission to use your current location. This is so that iCloud can show you where your friends are in proximity to you. If you don’t allow your location to be shared, you can still see where your friends are, but you won’t see your own location.

• The web app doesn’t include a Notify Me option (to be informed when a friend leaves or arrives at a given location); it also lacks the iOS version’s Contact and More links (which show you the person’s record in Contacts and current address, among other things).

• Although you can click your name in the lower-left corner of the screen to see and change which device reports your location, you can’t change that device to be the computer you’re using to view the web app, because Find My Friends requires the more precise data that GPS-equipped devices can provide.

The Find iPhone Web App

Just as Find Friends is the web app version of Find My Friends, Find iPhone is the web equivalent of Find My Device. If your Mac or iOS device has been lost or stolen, then assuming it had Find My Device activated, you can use Find iPhone to locate it—and play a sound on it, lock it remotely, or even wipe its contents. I discuss this app in some detail later, in Find Your Device with a Browser.

The News Publisher Web App

There’s one final web app, but most iCloud users won’t see it. It’s called News Publisher, and it’s a tool that enables publishers (including individual bloggers) to add their content to the News app in iOS 9 or later. At present, it supports only RSS feeds, but in the future Apple promises to support a new Apple News Format, which will open the door to additional capabilities (including advertising, optimized loading, and custom layouts).

To learn more about News Publisher, to sign up for the service (which activates the News Publisher web app), and to submit one or more RSS feeds for Apple’s approval, see Apple’s Publishing with Apple News Format page.

Settings

Although not quite a web app like the other items discussed here, the Settings page lets you view (and in some cases manage) your Apple ID, language, time zone, storage, devices, Family Sharing, and other iCloud features. It also lets you restore certain items you may have deleted from iCloud. I discuss all this later, in Change iCloud Website Settings.