Apple announced that since iOS / iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, third-party apps that use Apple’s iCloud database will no longer be affected and can continue to sync data after users turn off iCloud Drive.
In previous versions of macOS and iOS, if users disabled iCloud Drive in Settings or System Preferences, third-party apps (such as CloudKit) could continue to sync even if they did not use iCloud Drive. Apple blocked third-party applications (such as CloudKit) from accessing iCloud by default, even if they did not use iCloud Drive.
Some users may have previously thought that iCloud Drive was taking up a lot of storage space and chose to disable it, but didn’t realize that disabling it would also prevent third-party apps from syncing.
