You can change how Yarn Squirrel stores PDFs whenever you like, in More → Settings → PDF Storage. Neither direction will lose a pattern, but they behave differently, and it’s worth knowing which before you tap.
In the appOpen PDF Storage settings
Switching to “Store in iCloud”
Yarn Squirrel offers to copy the PDFs you’ve already imported into iCloud, so they stop depending on where the originals live. You’ll be asked first — Copy existing PDFs to iCloud? — because it does use iCloud storage.
- Choose Copy to iCloud and it copies them across, showing its progress as it goes. A large library takes a little while, so it’s a nice thing to start and leave alone.
- Choose Not now and nothing changes at all — Yarn Squirrel stays on referenced files. It doesn’t switch you over without copying.
Your original files are left completely untouched. Yarn Squirrel copies, never moves.
Do this on the device that imported the patterns. Yarn Squirrel can only copy files it can currently reach, so any pattern showing not available on this device will be skipped here. If you’re on a new phone, reconnect first — see Reconnecting your PDFs — then switch.
Switching to “Reference original files”
This one only affects what happens next. PDFs already copied into iCloud stay there and keep working; from now on, newly imported patterns will point at your original files instead.
If you want to reclaim that iCloud space afterwards, you can delete Yarn Squirrel’s copies yourself in the Files app, under Yarn Squirrel.
Bear in mind that from this point on, each new device will ask you once to point at your PDFs again. Where Yarn Squirrel keeps your PDFs explains why.
Patterns you imported before the switch
Switching doesn’t rewrite your history. Patterns keep whichever arrangement they had at the time, unless you use the copy step above. That means a library can happily be a mix of both, and everything still opens — Yarn Squirrel works out where each pattern lives on its own.