This change may annoy you if you use OneDrive on your Mac

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Basically Microsoft is making it hard to opt out of “Files on Demand” on OneDrive and keep your files on your device.  The article gives a work-around, but it is not exactly obvious.

See this explanation:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/03/microsoft-responds-mac-onedrive-criticism/

OneDrive must have updated on my Mac over the last day as the OneDrive behaviour and preferences interface changed as per the article.

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There is a lot of fallout from this change. To clarify, these updates to OneDrive are being made because macOS 12.3 is no longer supporting the kernel extensions that OneDrive uses to sync and power its Files On-Demand feature.

Files On-Demand is where files appear in the OneDrive folder but don’t take up storage space, because they are stored in the cloud. When you open them, OneDrive automatically downloads them so they can be used as needed. OneDrive automatically removes the local copy and keeps the cloud copy when disk space is low. The user can manually tell OneDrive to remove the local copy at any time, or force OneDrive to always keep a local copy. These settings can also be applied to entire folders.

Microsoft has defended their decision to make Files On-Demand mandatory by citing that the new platform they are using, Apple’s own File Provider platform (which is also used by iCloud Drive), has Files On-Demand functionality as a “core part”. Microsoft has said that users who want all of their files available offline should right-click (or control-click) on the root OneDrive folder and mark it as “Always Keep on This Device”.

Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/bc-p/3106689
They’ve since updated the blog above with a response to the critical response of this update; scroll down to see it.

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