Can we stop with all the "Refresh your desktop" and "uninstall One Drive" answers now? We've got fifteen pages of it and it's really not helpful. Apart from antything else it's like getting a warning light on your dashboard and solving it by removing the
bulb.
In my case it almost certainly is One Drive that caused it but I don't want to uninstall One Drive as then I wouldn't be able to use it! Nor do I want to disable the overlay, as it's useful to know that my One Drive files are synced. What I do want to
know is why it's suddenly started syncing my desktop.
I have a theory. Recently my laptop received the 1803 update, which includes Windows Timeline. A feature of this is that you can scroll back and see activity from any machine on your Microsoft Account, and quickly restore that session to carry on working
from where you left off. My desktop machine does NOT have this update yet, but maybe One Drive has beguin syncing my desktops on both machines because for some bizarre reason it's necessary for Timeline to work??
All supposition at this point, because Microsoft don't seem to believe in keeping their customers informed any more, and believe they can do whatever the hell they like with our personal data.
I realise this thread is years old, so this won't apply to anybody who posted before April this year, but it might point at the culprit for any new posters.