Oh, yes ok icloud drive is folder I click on all time in sidebar, both imac and laptop... stuff in cloud, and maybe taking 30 GB ; but why this counts against hardrive? Why? it's in the cloud???
Dont get icloud vs icloud drive, and still don't get then why laptop says 80gb is being used. Totally lost on that.
In another thread I commended the
Eclectic Light Company to you as a source of information on
M1/M2 Macs and mentioned they had some interesting utilities available. Among those utilities is one called Cirrus that specifically targets the situation you are attempting to grok. Cirrus is a free download
here. If nothing else its
help file clearly outlines the possibilities.
