Finding specific things
A missing or empty Documents folder is usually a sidebar setting or iCloud moving your files, not data loss. Here is how to open it right now and which cause fits.
Press ⇧⌘O in Finder. That is the shortcut for Go > Documents and it opens the folder even when the sidebar entry is gone. If it opens and your files are in it, the only thing missing was the sidebar item: open Finder > Settings > Sidebar and tick Documents under Favorites.
If it opens and the folder is empty, your files have most likely moved to iCloud Drive. That happens when Desktop & Documents Folders was turned off in iCloud settings: Apple says the files stay in iCloud Drive and a new, empty Documents folder is created in your home folder. Open iCloud Drive in the Finder sidebar and look for a folder called Documents there.
With the option on, your Documents folder lives in iCloud Drive. Turn it off and macOS makes a new, empty Documents folder in your home folder while the originals stay in iCloud Drive. Turning off iCloud Drive or signing out of iCloud also creates new local folders, and Apple says you can then choose to keep a local copy of your files. Either way, nothing has been deleted; the files are in the other place.
Where to look depends on your macOS version. On macOS Tahoe 26 or later, Apple says, iCloud's Desktop and Documents folders sit under Favorites in the sidebar, marked with a cloud. Before that, find them under the sidebar's iCloud heading.
To check the setting, open System Settings, click your name, click iCloud, then Drive (some versions label it iCloud Drive) and look for Desktop & Documents Folders. The wording and layout shift between versions, so if you can't find it, search System Settings for "Desktop".
Turning it back on doesn't mix the two sets of files. When iCloud Drive already has a Documents folder, Finder puts what's in your local Documents into a new folder inside it and tells you so: "The items in the Documents folder on this Mac have been moved into a new folder called ..." in the existing Documents folder in iCloud Drive. Apple describes the same for a second Mac, whose files land in a folder named after that Mac. If you would rather keep everything local, the opposite job, going back to local storage, has its own guide: leaving iCloud safely.
Finder lets you hide any Favorites entry. Open Finder > Settings, choose Sidebar, and tick Documents. If the box is already ticked and the item still isn't there, check that the sidebar itself is showing (View > Show Sidebar).
Each account has its own Documents folder. If you signed in as another user, or a different account was made after an update or migration, you are looking at a different home folder. The Finder window title and the path bar (View > Show Path Bar) show whose folder you are in. The account that owned the files has to be the one that opens them; other accounts' private folders aren't readable from yours.
If a script, a Terminal command or a migration tool moved or renamed the folder, the sidebar's Documents item has nothing to point to. Check with:
ls -ld ~/DocumentsIf that prints a line starting drwx, the folder exists at the standard location. If Terminal says No such file or directory, the folder isn't there; search for it by name. ls -ld reads only the folder's own entry, not what's inside it.
First check the Trash. Files deleted from iCloud Drive are deleted on every device, and Apple keeps them for 30 days in Recently Deleted, in the Files app on an iPhone or iPad or on iCloud.com. After that, a backup is the route. Why files vanish from the Desktop covers the same iCloud mechanism for the Desktop.
When the same files could be in your home folder, in iCloud Drive or in a folder named after another Mac, a name search is quicker than opening each. In Everywhere, type a word from a file's name, or folder:Documents to list every folder called Documents; each result shows the folder it sits in, so the iCloud copy and the local one are easy to tell apart. Both places are included only once Everywhere has Full Disk Access.
The usual reasons are that iCloud's Desktop & Documents Folders option was turned off, so the files stay in iCloud Drive, or that the sidebar item was switched off in Finder > Settings > Sidebar. Press Shift-Command-O to open the folder directly.
If iCloud's Desktop & Documents Folders option has been turned off, macOS creates a new empty Documents folder in your home folder and leaves the files in iCloud Drive. Open iCloud Drive in Finder and look for Documents there.
Open Finder > Settings, click Sidebar, and tick Documents under Favorites. If the sidebar itself is hidden, choose View > Show Sidebar.
Press Shift-Command-O in Finder, or choose Go > Documents. It is also at ~/Documents in your home folder.
Everywhere keeps track of every file on your Mac, including the folders Spotlight hides and drives you have unplugged. Free for a day, then $19 once.
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