Why were conflicted copies of my folders created on some connected devices?

Question

On my iPhone, in addition to my usual folders I created (let's call them name1, name2,..), I see a second copy of TWO of them, "name1(conflicted copy 2026-04-27" and "name2(conflicted copy 2026-04-27". Some but not all folders inside these appear in both, but some apparently have been moved to the "conflicted" version only.

On my Macbook Pro, I see ONLY the two "conflicted" folders - the original ones have disappeared. However, the "date modified" info shows April 20 for one, and April 7 for the other - not April 27 as the title would indicate. The other folders and files appear unchanged in both.

None of this has been initiated by me, nor have I seen any alerts. Obviously this looks very scary - I'm afraid that files may have been lost in the shuffle, or not up-to-date. Most importantly: How do I reconcile those different folders (with different content) back into one single, "non-conflicted" version?

Hannah · Answer

Hi there, @seberkuhn, thanks for your post.

To provide some context on the conflicted copies, they basically happen when two or more people (or devices) are working on the same files at the same time.

There's no automatic way to consolidate the original version and the conflicted one, however, you can see what you can do and how to prevent this from happening again here.

Let me know if you need anything else!