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

I'm not gonna go for an alternative without further research. I already own a piece of software which allows me to sync between different machines on my network at home/office. Since it's only me that needs syncing and it involves two machines the number of permutations is not that big (either with more people or more machines it gets complicated really fast).

I also own a piece of software which helps me mounting onedrive as a networkdisk. So my heavily encrypted backups are on onedrive. Which works because you can select (still; but maybe that is also going to disappear :-( ) which directories not to sync. That is the biggest difference between onedrive and icloud and why icloud is useless. I pay for the diskspace so why not use it?

I've wasted so much time trying to sort out this problem over the past few days - tried to restore from time machine, uninstalled and reinstalled one drive, recopied all my files from an external hard drive to my one drive folder (which were then promptly deleted by one drive again and forced back into the cloud!), etc., etc. A full day wasted on this nonsense! As someone who is self employed, I am extremely upset about this.

After considering the various alternatives to one drive, I've decided to ditch it and use Google drive as I already had a basic subscription (had to upgrade my subscription to a paid one to get more space) and so far it's working perfectly ... I once again have the option to keep files locally on my hard drive (like I used to with one drive!!) OR have the option to have all or some files in the cloud only - it's MY CHOICE, not what Microsoft deems to be good for the user!

I'm having the same issue and am shocked that Microsoft would do this!
Incidentally, it's not the plan you have that makes any difference. I have 1 TB of storage of which I use half and I have exactly the same issue with my files having been deleted and only appearing on the cloud.

While researching found this text:

>>If you're using either Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive to sync files on a Mac, you'll want to pay attention to the release notes for today's macOS 12.3 beta: the update is deprecating a kernel extension used by both apps to download files on demand. The extension means that files are available when you need them but don't take up space on your disk when you don't. Apple says that "both service providers have replacements for this functionality currently in beta."

In the end I had to restore from timemachine with timestamp before update. Because downloadin did not download all files. Then manually compare files. Delete onedrive app, delete all keys in keychain plus all files and dir in ~/Library. Nw install. Same disaster. But dropbox does not seem to be an alternative. Because apple is also doing things. Great :-(. But anyway office business goes out the window. It's useless now.

These are the kinds of problems that could be avoided if someone inside Microsoft had tested the change in macOS before releasing it.

And I'm completely sure this can be reverted or fixed very quickly.

But, you know, we need to ask Microsoft to fix something that doesn't work (face palm).