I'm not doubting you, just saying I've never seen it, and I couldn't reproduce this in TextEdit either. It's quite possible it defaults to that in a fresh OS install, which I haven't done for as long as I can remember.

I'm not on a clean install either, and I have changed the save location from iCloud to a local folder a zillion times. It is similar to how Apple pushes iCloud on iOS, with notifications that can only be "dismissed" by clicking through to an iCloud advert. Steve is rolling over in his grave.

> I'm not on a clean install either, and I have changed the save location from iCloud to a local folder a zillion times.

That's unfortunate, I can only confirm that it doesn't happen to me on current/next versions of macOS.

If that happened to me, I guess I'd just turn it off. https://imgur.com/a/Cl0xyJi

I guess I'm one of those old-fashioned folks who thinks that having a functionality enabled shouldn't mean that it's used as the default (even after the user repeatedly changes it).