Share and collaborate with iCloud

Sharing a document

Choose Collaborate… on a document to invite someone by their Apple Account — it's a separate action from Share…, which just sends a copy. Only that single file, never your whole library, moves into your own iCloud Drive so they can open it, and it appears in your library under Shared by you.

Receiving a shared document

Accepting an invitation adds the document to your library under Shared with you, and opens it in Colophon rather than Files. It's a live reference to the owner's file, not a copy, so your edits sync back to everyone else on the share.

When you both edit at once

iCloud Drive syncs the whole file, so editing the same document at the same time on two devices produces a conflict rather than a merge. Colophon surfaces it as a choice: Keep Mine, Keep Theirs, or Keep Both, rather than silently picking one side.

Stopping a share

Stop Sharing, from the owner's side, returns the document to local-only storage for everyone. Removing a received document from your own library only drops your reference, leaving the owner's file untouched.