One drive online files take space on Macbook

With your help, I was able to get a good result from the Terminal and send a screenshot to OneDrive support. And indeed, the result in Terminal was “st_blocks=0” for my files on demand. Altough the files do take up space according to the storage utillity of my Mac, which I also send proof of to support.

Today, I received a response back from OneDrive customer support (originally in Dutch, which I have translated):

“Our Product Specialists have now responded and indicated that since the tested 'online only' files all yielded the combination st_blocks = 0 as a result, this confirms that these files do not take up physical storage of the hard disk. This means that the problem cannot be solved by the OneDrive Engineers, but it is best done with Mac support. My advice is therefore to raise the issue with them so that they can investigate why the system continues to indicate a local storage usage.”

I find this response a bit frustating. Why do I, as a customer, have to take this up with Apple? A more customer-focused approach would have been if they consulted Apple engineers on my/our behalf.

Sigh.

Anyway, does anyone have an ‘in’ with Apple support?

Cracked it.

Not sure which element of the following fixed the issue, but fixed it is.

1. Created more space on Mac by choosing not to show two Onedrive folders with very high volume content.

2)Turned off files on demand

3. Wait until OneDrive has synced all files to Mac.
4. Turned on files on demand.
5. Wait until OneDrive has synced all files to Mac.
6. Selected Make all folders available.

It appears that this has sorted the issue, at least for the time being.

It is great that this worked for you!

Unfortunately, I am not as lucky.

After following these steps, files that are 'on demand', still take up space on my Macbook. Perhaps there are multiple issues at play that require different solutions?

My situation looks like this:

• my storage capacity is almost full with OneDrive Documents (the green bar in the screenshot);
• even though files on demand is enabled ("Bestanden op aanvraag" in Dutch, as can be seen in the window in the top right);
• when I ask my Mac which files are taking up so much space, it lists OneDrive files (bottom left corner);
• but according to Finder, those files are only in the cloud - see for example the top largest file according to the window on the bottom left, which Finder lists as 'on demand' (as seen by the cloud icon) in the bottom right window.

![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/942752b1-ed28-4cf4-9fe3-9198e86534b2?platform=QnA

This issue is making my Mac unusable.

I resolved my issue with this by uninstalling Onedrive and reinstalling and turning off 'Files on Demand'. Files on Demand reserved my whole Mac storage. This is a Onedrive issue and this needs to be fixed. Without Files on Demand I enabled one folder that will sync to the cloud and vica versa, this is my workaround for using Onedrive on MacOS.

I have the same issue, however I have had this same problem with Dropbox before I switched to OneDrive. A huge portion of my Macintosh HD disk is taken up by greyed out "other" storage, and when you click on "manage storage", all those files that are OneDrive only are showing up. If you delete them, you gain that space, but if you then put them on OneDrive again, even if purely online, your available space decreases again by that amount. Clearly the Mac is counting these fields towards storage, and the frustrating thing about that is that you run out of space. It's not just cosmetic as the responses here have tried to suggest. I find myself constantly having to empty my recycling because I'm working with a free space of just 3 GB by now.