I recently encountered a high CPU usage problem and loud fans reported by others with the 'distnoted' process running high when I chose to sync existing OneDrive folders (around 85GB of new data to sync to my Mac from Onedrive).
For reference, I'm using a 2016 Macbook Pro i7 running MacOS Big Sur 11.1
Instead of disabling the Finder extension for Onedrive suggested by others, which removes the sync status icons next to each folder/file, I disabled the 'Allow Notifications' for OneDrive in the Notifications Centre and it appears I don't need to do anything
further.
From my experience, my CPU load is much lower and fan noise has all but gone away, for me, this appears to have been enough.
It will still take time for files to the first sync but this is true in Windows also.
Since making this change I've not had further issues with the CPU load on OneDrive or 'distnoted' process (Notifications) but if I encounter other issues (or the CPU load goes back up) in the coming days/weeks I will edit this post with any additional actions/steps
I take.
Thought I would share, hope someone finds this useful.
