How to disable Files On-Demand in OneDrive MacOS? It's enforced since the last update ...

This is a disaster. Microsoft, please help. We cannot back up files as a result of this and you are putting our business at risk. How soon can you get an update out to fix this as well as the Outlook problem that requires a Teams default?

Haha, you need to hire some UX designers that will help you and sort such things for you Microsoft.

You acted like an indie startup. Ridiculous that in such a big corporation it seems like you are not thinking, or have no people to do so. In your ads, you advertise yourself as a PRO but tbh what we can see is a huge mess and you don't know how to make development and iterations.

As One Drive Product Team, you will be facing professionals which are in many cases smarter than people in your company.

You lost me as a One drive user, Edge User, and all services user. You can't be trusted.

I can only imagine how angry someone who uses a satellite phone or someone with limited internet access must be right now. - no files...

And seriously, you need to ask your UX designers, not engineers or programmers they aren't important anymore. Have some empathy... Who is in charge there? You should "have a talk" with him/her :D

I decided to switch from OneDrive to Mega.io for good.

I have a Raspberry PI 4 in my house that I use to make Time Machine backups and to store some other data, so starting this weekend I will be using the Mega client to sync a 6TB HDD attached to that R-PI with Mega and I'll use the same approach to sync the folder with the info I have stored in OneDrive.

That way I'll have not only a good and reliable backup on the cloud but on my Time Machine storage too.

After all, this situation made me think about the best way to keep my data safe and accessible.

Thanks for that Microsoft and goodbye!

Yesterday's lengthy update from Microsoft's OneDrive architect Jack Nichols in the link above is really a must read.

I have been a heavy OneDrive user for years, using it for syncing lots of files, including hundreds of thousands of pictures, between multiple devices. The macOS OneDrive client is key in my cloud file storage workflow, so I was also in fury when I initially discovered the update and found that all my files seemed to be gone, forcing me to use theFiles On-demand feature that I had always kept disabled due to considerable performance issues with the previous OneDrive version.

Even with that feature disabled, the OneDrive experience on macOS has always been mixed, due to the issues that Jack is mentioning: performance issues, inconsistent icons... it was clearly not the experience that you expect from Microsoft.

After having read Jack's explanation, and being in the software development industry, I welcome the new approach that Microsoft is taking, and the time they invest in the macOS OneDrive client. Relying on a native macOS feature (the macOS File Provider platform) is clearly the way to go.

There are, however, issues remaining. In my case, even after having checked Always keep on the device on a folder and waited for hours, the files are still not immediately displayed in its sub-folders, until I open those folders and wait for the 2 seconds delay to have them appear. They also do not appear in Spotlight searches until I do so.

They should have warned us all ahead of this update. There is nothing worse than booting your Mac in the morning and discover that all your files are gone, or at least seem to be, but let's all reconsider the question with that status update and describe the remaining bugs to Microsoft.

Not seem to. They are really deleted. My wifes mac was switched off the 24th. On the 30th she decided to switch it on. I was just in time to hit duplicate in finder on the ondrive directory before the mouse decided it needed new batteries. (Yeah Murphy). Anyway after a while there was the dreaded link to nothing in Library. The directory UBF8... was also empty. The duplicate had worked. So I decided on a little test. I disconnected the mac from the onedrive account in onedrive. It then warns you that it can only keep files on your mac which are already on your mac. Well that's ok. Nobody in their right mind would delete files on a computer owned by someone else (ransomware gangs would but...) So I clicked ok. Waited, nothing. All 181gb was gone. So I can say that it not only seems your files are deleted. They are deleted. Or if anyone want to be picky they are in a place undefined not accessble by you. So they might as well be deleted. The effect is the same. Something did mv -f * > /dev/NULL 😵

While I agree that this info is good to know, the basic premise is that this improves the files-on-demand feature. I don't use that feature, so they really messed up the Onedrive experience for those of us not using files-on-demand. MS really needs to understand their user-base before making such drastic changes, and deleting all my files :( (Fyi, I found your post very helpful; thanks for including it here)