Cloud symbol

Meanings

The cloud icon stands for a remote service. The shape comes from network diagrams, where a cloud was drawn around the part of the network whose internals did not matter to the diagram — a meaning of deliberate vagueness that survived into consumer interfaces.

• Common modern usageVerified fact

  Stands for a remote service or remote storage rather than for anything on the device in use.

  Contexts: Software

• Historically documentedVerified fact

  Descends from the cloud drawn in network diagrams to enclose the portion of a network whose internal arrangement was irrelevant to the diagram — the vagueness was the point, and it carried into the consumer meaning.

  Contexts: History, Software

• Common modern usageVerified fact

  Is qualified by a small arrow or tick in most systems to distinguish stored, syncing and available-offline states, since the cloud alone says only where something is and not what is happening to it.

  Contexts: Software

Visual description