How to Prevent iCloud/OneDrive from Moving the Smaart Directory

This article applies to both Windows and macOS operating systems.

OneDrive

Smaart generally does not work well with OneDrive -- or any other cloud-storage and syncing services that backup folders on a computer's hard drive to a "cloud" -- due to how these services handle backing up the files. Instead of simply making a copy of the folders and their contents onto the cloud, OneDrive will override the standard Documents folder and use its own directory when backing up and syncing to the cloud. This breaks Smaart because it cannot see the OneDrive directory, so the files it's expecting (such as the configuration or trace files) are gone and cause a crash.

This issue can be confirmed if the Smaart folder (or its most recent version) can be found in:
/Users/<your_username>/OneDrive/Documents

To remedy this, we have to tell OneDrive to stop syncing the Documents folder entirely since there isn't a way to tell OneDrive not to sync specific folders or directories. Steps to change the OneDrive backup settings on Windows can be found here while steps for macOS can be found here.

Once the Documents folder is no longer being synced, move the copy within OneDrive back onto the local hard drive (/Users/<your_username>/Documents) and restart Smaart. If issues persist, you may have to create a new folder then import your traces and curves within Smaart from the previous folder.

iCloud

Like OneDrive, iCloud will store files on the cloud rather than keeping a copy on the device, which does not work with Smaart. We recommend that you do not enable syncing "Desktop & Documents Folders" as this will cause an issue with Smaart. If this is already enabled when installing Smaart, you'll want to disable it by following these steps from Apple. Accompanying screenshots are below:

Note: these screenshots were taken on macOS Sequoia (15.1)

Disabling this option will keep the files online, but you should have an option to keep a local copy. If the Smaart folder was moved onto iCloud, please look for a folder called iCloud Drive (Archive) in your home (user) folder. Find the Smaart folder, move it back to the Documents folder on your device, and Smaart should recognize it.

If you're looking to move data between computers or save it to a shared located, the best practice is to create and back up a separate directory on your hard drive that you can copy files to. Please also note that configuration files cannot be shared between computers. If Smaart is not loading with the configuration file pulled from OneDrive, a new one will need to be created as it is likely corrupt.