How to enable iCloud Drive in iOS 9

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Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

iCloud Drive is a Dropbox and Google Drive-type service from Apple that lets you store documents in the cloud, making it super easy to synchronize them between your iOS and OS X devices.

You can access it on your Mac with an icon that shows all the documents you’ve stored in iCloud in a folder-like structure.

Prior to iOS 9, in order to access these documents on your iPhone or iPad, you’d need to open an app that supported iCloud Drive on your device.

Not anymore. iOS 9 comes with its own iCloud Drive app, and here’s how to enable it.

Tap open your Settings app and then tap on iCloud. If iCloud Drive is not yet enabled, tap on the toggle switch next to iCloud Drive to set it ON. One section down is the Show on Home Screen toggle – to see an iCloud Drive app on your iPhone or iPad along with all the other apps, simply toggle this to ON, as well.

You can swipe down and toggle ON or OFF all the apps that support iCloud Drive just below.

Click your Home Screen and swipe around until you see the iCloud Drive icon. Tap it to launch, and then you’ll see all the files you’ve sent there, in handily-organized folders for specific document types, like Numbers, Preview,Pages, and for any third-party apps that support iCloud Drive, like Pixelmator.

If you’d like to get rid of iCloud Drive from your Home Screen, simply head into the iCloud settings and toggle Show on Home Screen to OFF.

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