One drive online files take space on Macbook

I'm experiencing the same problem as others in this thread (and yes I have Files On Demand turned on):

The reported size (reported by Microsoft) of my OneDrive files is not the same as the reported size of these files (by Macintosh).

If i go to the OneDrive icon in my toolbar, then More/Settings/Account, Microsoft reports that 10.2 GB of a folder are syncing.

The Finder says it's 88.9 GB.

These amounts are down from 20 GB and 200 GB respectively b/c i was getting out-of-space warnings and was unable to open Photoshop. So i had to go in and un-sync a number of folders.

Adding insult to injury -- I am told when i open a file to wait while OneDrive downloads it (and routinely get slowed down within InDesign as Microsoft tries to download assets).

At one point i was being told that my Documents folder (where my OneDrive files were) was larger than the size of my HD.

It should be clear that the Files On Demand feature simply does not work on the Mac. 

This is what i just submitted via the "Submit Feedback" link within OneDrive (as if that's not what we're doing in this thread):

I am using Microsoft OneDrive for Mac.

Shortly after starting to use, I got an out of space error on my machine.

In looking for where to free up space on my Mac, I noticed that the reported size of the files in my synced Sharepoint folder were VERY different from the size of those files as reported by the Mac Finder.

From within OneDrive (Preferences/Account) the size was reported as 10.2GB; Whereas when I either "Get Info" or turn on "calculate folder sizes" within the Finder preferences I'm told the folder size is 88.9 GB.

"Files On Demand" is turned on and I get a brief message when i try and open a file to wait while Microsoft OneDrive downloads it.

But it's clear that these files are taking up actual HD space on my machine.

It got to a point where I had to unsync the majority of my design archives b/c I had no more room on my machine.

After unsyncing ~110 GB of files however my available HD space only went from 8GB to 29.5GB.

I'm very close to uninstalling OneDrive from my machine and am angry that you sold a client to my employer that clearly is not working as you describe it to work.

Okay, so I have spoken with Apple Mac support. Luckily, the people I spoke to were very helpful.

They determined that the on demand OneDrive files on my Macbook take up no disk space. While the storage management application thinks the files do take up the space they would if I were to download them all.

After which they escalated the issue to Apple engineers.

For this, they asked me to supply them with certain screenshots with proof of the issue and a dmg-file with captured disk data (what happens to the disk when I have a file on demand, download it and then clear it from my hard drive again).

I have also shared my entire mail-history with OneDrive support with them and supplied them with the link to this community-page.

A support professional will call me when there is a response from the engineering team.

Fingers crossed.

same problem here

I have about 37gb on my OneDrive. According to the information in the onedrive folder, only 57.4 MB are locally on my macbook pro (first screenshot below). But in the macOS storage manager, it appears as if the 37GB is locally (taking up storage space) - second screenshot (macos shows that the files that are taking up more space locally are the files that are on my OneDrive and are not locally on the macbook pro). Locally I have close to 0MB of documents. The 37GB shown in the macos storage manager is the OneDrive files that shouldn't be counted as "taking up space"

Full factory reset

Two weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and do a full factory reset on my Macbook. To make sure any settings that caused the problem weren't copied over, I chose not to restore an iCloud copy of all my settings, apps, etc.

That solved most of the problem. The most important part anyway: the OneDrive on demand files did not clog up my hard drive anymore.

The one strange thing that remained: according to the storage indicator status bar my drive was completely full. It claimed documents took up '126,43 GB', which is impossible since my drive only has 121 GB storage in total!

However, above the status bar, the Mac indicated '30,71 GB' was free. And more importantly: that number was accurate. But at the time, a big part of me was suspecting this would not last.

![Image](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/49b394bf-493a-4984-a19f-b0a0c9bee313?platform=QnA

Big Sur

And then this week, I installed the Big Sur update. Which also solved the above mentioned remaining issue. For the first time in months, OneDrive is working exactly as it should on my Macbook.

Contact with Microsoft support

For what it's worth, today I received an update by mail from the 'Microsoft 365 Senior Ambassador' at Microsoft Support I had been in contact with (translated from Dutch to English using Google Translate):

"I have an update regarding your request. This has been picked up by third line and I am now awaiting their analysis. As soon as I receive a message from them, I will get back to you."

After I send a reply to report the issue seems fixed for now, I received the following message from support (again, translated):

"It is not known to me yet that it has been "fixed" with the big sur update. I suggest that we wait for a message from the escalation engineer for additional insights. In the meantime, it can then be seen whether the problem repeats or not."

It seems that Microsoft didn't solve the problem.

I have the same issue here.

Even though I set all my files to on demand in OneDrive, MacOS still thinks those files are taking space of the storage.

Because of this issue, iCloud Drive cannot download files and sending me an error that I have no enough space.

But actually I have 700GB space....

700GB Storage - OneDrive(450GB) = 250GB

Even though the 450GB take only 100mb space of my disk, MacOS thinks they are using 450GB.