Forum Discussion
Files On-Demand for macOS QA
Hello there!
2.24.22 UPDATE: We've been listening to your feedback, and we've made some design changes. We're releasing a new version that addresses the most common themes and makes it easier to achieve the previous experience. Please read the latest blog post for more details.
Two weeks ago, we posted an update about Files On-Demand for macOS and have received overwhelming feedback from the community. We have spent a lot of time reading your comments and concerns to understand how we can improve your experience on macOS. To address some of the common issues and doubts we have updated the blog with a FAQ. If you still have more queries feel free to reach out to the team directly on this thread.
Thank you for your constant support and partnership!
Team OneDrive
152 Replies
Like others, we have sync'd files from both our user level M365 OneDrive, and also from within the Teams SharePoint channels. Prior to this, the folder structure within Finder would list the channels alphabetically. Now it lists them in a random order (I'm guessing using some hidden GUID from the link between SyncRoot and the cache folder).
How do we get the sync'd folders to show in the correct order again?
User level OneDrive files and folders are fine; it is just the ones linked via Teams/SharePoint which are messed up.
- Jack_Nichols
Microsoft
Hi KirkConway - I assume you are referring to the items under the Locations node in the Finder? These can just be dragged to reorder them in the order you like under Locations.
JackJack_NicholsNo. I'm talking about the folder structure within OneDrive
If we treat Finder like Windows Explorer; with each sync'd Teams channel appearing as a folder; these previously would appear in alphabetical order; the same as every other folder on the hard drive.
Now they don't; and no matter how we tell Finder to order them, be it by type/name etc; the order remains incorrect and unchanging.
My OneDrive App migration took 3 days to complete and OneDrive has been sitting IDLE for more than a day, I have not updated a single file over OneDrive. In IDLE state, with no syncing traffic going on, it consumes 11.42 GB
of ram on a MacBook Air M1 16GB. After the migration was done it consumed "only" 5.5 GB of ram and it just went up from there.How is it possible for a syncing app to eat so much ram? Do you expect us to buy a 32GB MacBook Pro to run OneDrive? Microsoft, fix this before we all leave this service, this whole mess is madness coming from a BIG company with a lot of resources. Once we leave, we won't come back.
- Wow: now I feel lucky that it's only consuming 2GB of my 16. (Which is, of course, still utterly horrendous.)
It happens even worse to me. Onedrive takes 6GB memory in a Mac M1 8GB. It doesn't make sense at all.
Any answer from Microsoft?
- Thanks for resolving my issue http://www.pcloud.com!
I've been a Microsoft 365 subscriber for years, not any more. Not a single person could answer any of the questions I posted, and reposted. Moved over to pCloud, less of a clown show there and the service actually works. Their solution for files on-demand is way better.
I am also concerned about the increased RAM and swap usage. I’m on an M1 with 16Gb of RAM and during the initial sync (i.e., after the update) it went up to 69Gb according to the Activity Monitor. Otherwise, it hovers around 5-7Gb, which also seems a bit too high.
The impact to creatives such as photographers, videographers that store large amount of big files hasn't properly been addressed. The actual files reside in a hidden cache folders. Most Adobe products I've tried and DaVinci resolve aren't working with the shortcut links.
As detailed below:
"I wanted to reserve judgement until actually trying OneDrive after my macOS 12.2 update. As everyone else said, a Microsoft product that was working flawlessly is now broken. ALL of my Adobe photography apps such as Lightroom and Bridge can't easily find my files.Syncing is broken or extremely slow. A Sync Root which contains links, not actual files, and it can only be on your main drive. A Cache Path, contains the actual files, but only if currently downloaded or if Pinned. And this Cache Path is HIDDEN and users do not have the ability to modify this folder or its contents. Tell me, how the heck do I navigate to my files? The shortcut doesn't work in Bridge where my files used to reside? Now the only way see my photos in Bridge is to navigate to my Sync root and wait for them to sync? The files aren't even there.
BEFORE - External HD > OneDrive > FolderNOW - Local HD > Users > Username > Library > CloudStorage > OneDrive-Personal > Folder
Oh wait, I can choose to show hidden files in Adobe Bridge and navigate to the hidden .ODContainer-OneDrive to see my files in Bridge. Where should I even mark or edit my data from? No thought given to workflows or users.
- And if you use pipenv or poetry forget it - ALL of you virtual environments have now died as the location has changed.
- I think the problem here is that somehow this business-critical piece of software has made a major change (which I understand was precipitated by other system changes) with it appears NO analysis of common use-cases. In our case the files have to 100% with no interruption be available locally. We use the folders as daily working folders. They must be searchable and visible to all applications. We have to be able to trust the notification icons (in the past if the download badges weren't green I would wait until sync before undocking my laptop to go to the airport). This is how I work - and how everyone in my small company uses work. And the rest of my week will be spent with my colleagues trying to fix their machines.
A simple mantra: WE CANNOT ASSUME CONNECTIVITY. We travel. We work around the world. The people who made these changes are sat in Renton with their 1Gb connections and can't understand why we are whining.
Sadly my company is currently committed to Office 365 - If this doesn't get fixed that will definitely be reviewed.OneDrive is a KEY COMPONENT OF Office 365 fo Business - how has this been allowed to happen?
- OK, what amazes me is that you don't realize OneDrive is a business-critical tool - it is not acceptable for there to be breaking changes in functionality in this way.
I have a Macbook pro with three syncing accounts - a personal OD, a Business 365, and a sync from a folder on business sharepoint to my machine. The first two are messed up as others have said. The third is just plain not working, there are no files in the local directory and I cannot get it to re-sync from sharepoint online. So this is useless.
Also VSCode doesn't play nice with the new setup - git is showing EVERYTHING as having been modified - that's thousands of files for me.
What you have to understand is that my workflow is a MBP and I NEED to have everything local so that when I am on a plane or train I can continue to work.
I am having to move everything for me and my colleagues onto Dropbox, which is a major pain.
How was this allowed to happen?- Jack_NicholsHi dataveg,
> Also VSCode doesn't play nice with the new setup - git is
> showing EVERYTHING as having been modified - that's thousands
> of files for me.
In general, source control systems inside of your OneDrive have never been well-supported on any platform, as systems like git do a lot of things to files locally that can conflict with sync. Plus, it's a little redundant - usually you'll have a remote where you can push and pull, and that maintains history, and so forth. Is there a reason you have a git repo in your OneDrive? I know some customers do this, but I'm curious if there's anything about your setup that I can learn that might help inform how we handle this in the future.
Jack- I understand what you are saying about it being duplicative, but it shows you aren't understanding the use cases we have. All of my working files whether code or docs or whatever - are supposed to be in the company's OneDrive/MS365 folders. We are discouraged to have ANYTHING outside of that - and for good reason. So yes, that includes all of my code. This is a common use case, especially with small companies like ours.
In order to fix the sharepoint sync issue I had to stop syncing in the OneDrive App, delete the (empty) folder and then go online to sharepoint and start syncing again. And now I have to go a do the same for every one of my colleagues.
Again, this is a business critical app. This should not have happened. It took me a good two hours to just find reference to this change (after rebooting my machine, which is when everything changed). I thought I had malware at first and was desperately running scans.
- Hello, I think what we could do in my opinion is we could figure out a code to fix this issue.
I've pinned most of my files. If I understand you correctly, they are now in the sync root and in the cache path as well, but only taking up space once as they are clones. So far so good. But now I noticed that Time Machine backs up the files in both locations as distinct files, i.e. not as clones, using up twice as much space as before. I could exclude one location from backing up but I'm not sure which one. If I had to do a complete reinstall of MacOS and using my Time Machine backup to bring back my files (instead of downloading 300gb from OneDrive), would it be better to have them in the sync root or in the cache path?
- Jack_NicholsHi svenzin,
I think it depends a bit on what you are trying to achieve.
Unless you are space constrained, I'd continue to back up both, assuming your goal is to bring your Mac back to a "last known good" state. Having both would make that the most seamless. It seems a little weird that Time Machine makes two copies though - you might want to consider filing feedback on Apple using Feedback Assistant.
If you are space constrained, and want to prioritize avoiding downloading content from OneDrive, then I would probably back up the cache path. This only makes sense if you have pinned all of your content; otherwise, you aren't backing up anything meaningful. All that said, note that the existence of the cache path and how it is used is an implementation detail that can change at any time. If you choose to back it up, know that a future OneDrive update might render a backup of this content useless. That's probably not as much of an issue if you are doing regular backups, but it's just something to keep in mind.
Jack
Why does the "new and improved" OneDrive client refuse to download files even after you select "Always Keep on this Device?" On my M1 MacMini, I've been able to force this to work, although it took several days. On my Intel MacBook Pro, however, it simply will not download folders or files unless you click on each and every file, one by one by one...
It simply doesn't work consistently or sometimes at all. This is a complete failure, I still can't believe it. Ankita Kirti
- Hey Michael,
How did you get this to work in the M1 Mac? I am still looking for a solution to have all the files populated in my root folder (not the cache folder).
Pernille-Eskebo tech people
I have set my folders to 'Always available' and I have run the "ls -alR ~/OneDrive" command in Terminal.
Now all files show the always available icon AND the cloud icon. When I try ti quick view a file's contents (by pressing the space bar after selecting the file in finder), I only see a small version of the file or an icon.
The cloud icon disappears after I have fully opened the file once with the appropriate app. After that, quick view works as per normal as well.
The MS people in the community (not the tech community) assure me that I can disregard the cloud icon, which signals that the file is only available online. It means, according to them, that the file in the root folder is only an empty placeholder BUT the complete file is available in the hidden cache folder!
How do I force OneDrive to have a full version of ALL my files in the root folder?? The cloud icon staying there always is confusing and seems to be a bug :
Why are all my files redownloading with this update? Why are my always-available files displaying a "not downloaded" icon?
Let me first set you at ease: your files aren't actually redownloading. What you are seeing is a bit of an optical illusion.
When your OneDrive instance is upgraded to the new Files On-Demand, macOS creates a new folder for your OneDrive files and we move your old folder into our cache location. We do it this way for many reasons, but two of the most important are that we can preserve your settings around which files are always available, and we can prevent the sync client from performing a costly reindex of all of your content.
As your files are brought into our cache, we tell the macOS File Provider platform about them. That causes the operating system to create the files in the new OneDrive folder that you will actually use. As part of telling the File Provider platform about your files, we include metadata about them, so that the operating system knows how big they are, what icons to show, and so forth.
Unfortunately, the current implementation of File Provider does not allow us to tell the operating system that we already have the file's contents available – so they appear to be online-only, even though their contents are safe in our cache, ready for the first time you access them. The best that we can do is tell the system to show the always available icon (the checkmark), but we can't tell the system to hide the "not downloaded" icon. The "not downloaded" icon is shown automatically by the File Provider system when the file is dataless in the sync root, and there's no current way for OneDrive to override this. Please know that we are actively investigating ways to address this, as we understand that it is a top source (if not the top source) of user confusion with this update.
The key thing to remember here is that if you double-click the files that we already have in our cache (files that you pinned when you selected “Always Keep On This Device” and anything you had downloaded before we did the upgrade), they will be retrieved and opened as expected, without any network traffic. This will work even if OneDrive isn't running, is paused, and so forth.
Michael_Dufranne: I read what you are saying but I am also telling you (and so are many others) that it does not describe what is actually happening. The files are not on my device, even after requesting that they be kept on. They are not indexed by spotlight, because I've checked. They are not captured by other spotlight-dependent applications, like Alfred. If I open them, they download, but if I edit them, I invariably get an error in the program they are opened in (for example, a pdf in Preview or a doc in Word) that the file has been changed by an external application and has to be reloaded. Then, when it's reloaded, all previous changes are gone. It's maddening.
- My normal way of working with Word documents with OneDrive is to open the Word document on my Mac (via Finder), edit the document, save it (or use Autosave), whereupon it will sync up to OneDrive and be available for others I have shared the document with.
The new version (in my case, the App Store version) does not permit this. If I open the document from within the OneDrive folder on my Mac using Finder, the document opens indicating 'DOCNAME - Saved to my Mac' at the top. However, if I open the same document from within the Word app, I see 'DOCNAME - Saved' at the top.
If I edit and save the document, it syncs immediately to OneDrive if I have opened the doc through Word. But if I open it my usual way - i.e., via Finder - the document saves to my Mac and shows a spinning sync wheel next to the name in Finder. But it does not actually sync up to OneDrive until I close the doc in Word.
This is bizarre and I can't believe it's intended to work like this. Have others encountered it?- Jack_NicholsHi - I think this was mentioned on another thread yesterday, but this is just a bug and we're rolling out a fix for it now. You should see an update to the App Store version of OneDrive soon. Let us know if that doesn't resolve your issue.
Jack- Jack - I'm in the camp of having the Auto Save issues and I have the App Store version. Rather than uninstall / reset and install the standalone version, I'm choosing to wait for the hot fix.
1) How will I know that I have the updated version? I'm currently on Version 22.002.0103.0004. Is the hot fix a new version number? Do I need to restart my Mac in order for it to update?
2) Will this hot fix address the issue I have noted before - when saving a document and choosing "Online Folders" in the save as dialog... right now only my current business OneDrive account is listed as a possible location. By current - I mean that is the account that I'm signed into in my Office apps and on Office.com. But I have two other OneDrive accounts currently active and syncing - a second business account and a personal account - that I do not apparently have access to when using this Save As approach. That same limitation applies when I try to turn on AutoSave from a document - which I opened up from finder in one of my 3 OneDrive folders - the pop up dialog asks me to upload or copy the file to OneDrive but only gives me 1 out of 3 OneDrive locations as a target.
Hopefully that description makes sense.
Thank you for the openness on this article https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/bc-p/3066588
The purpose of having OneDrive is to sync across devices and backup.
Since the beginning I chose to have most of my files on my Mac, for several reasons :
- spotlight index (just amazing)
- time machine backup
- other third party backup
- of course direct access even offline (working on the go)
From what I read (see below) files will not be indexed by Spotlight. This is a MAJOR issue, that will cause me to stop using OneDrive and use alternate services. Even if I have elected to have a local copy of the files, which does not make any sense.
Will this work with local file indexing (e.g. Apple's Spotlight)?
Yes. Spotlight indexes everything that is in your sync root, but note that Spotlight will not fetch (or hydrate) files that are dataless. If you are looking for something in Spotlight that could only be read from the full file (such as image EXIF data), only fully hydrated files will be indexed.
Spotlight will not index our cache folder."
Can you please look into that ?
Also the roll-out of the new OneDrive has been a real pain for us. I appreciate the openness but your support staff is clueless, and before doing those changes that go against our wishes, careful consideration and communication would have been appreciated.
- I second that. I love Mac's Spotlight search function and there is no option for me to turn off Files on Demand in the new OneDrive, which is extremely frustrating
- Jack_NicholsHi Michael,
> From what I read (see below) files will not be indexed by Spotlight. This is
> a MAJOR issue, that will cause me to stop using OneDrive and use alternate services.
Spotlight will index the content in your sync root (the path in ~/Library/CloudStorage). That will include any file metadata there, along with file content for files available in this path.
As far as getting the file content into the sync root, we're looking at ways to make this experience better, but in the near-term, if you want to force files to be available here, you can click the little "down cloud" icon to initiate a download. This works for folders too. For files that we already have in our cache path, this fetch should happen more or less instantly. Otherwise, we'll download the file from the cloud.
I've also shared the gist of your feedback with the rest of our team so we can think about how to better support this scenario.
Jack- WOW, finally I have my issues solved. I just needed to click the small cloud icon!
Why isn't MS sharing this information more widely??
To be clear, for all readers, here's what I did when I found that all folders were set on 'File on Demand':
1) set the folder you need to have downloaded on 'Always Available' by right-clicking the folder in finder and selecting that option at the lower part of the menu that shows
2) I think this is optional, but I cannot test it without --> run "ls -alR ~/OneDrive" command in Terminal. This forces Mac OS to make the clone file in your root folder.
- You need to find the correct path to your ~/Onedrive folder.
- Go to ~/library/CloudStorage and there you will find your OneDrive and SharePoint folders. At the bottom of Finder, in the Path Bar, right-click the onedrive folder and select the path. That path you use in this command.
- Alternatively, you select 'open path in terminal' and then you run the command "ls -alR"
3) Click the small cloud icons next to the always available icons to force the files to be downloaded (or transferred from the hidden cache)
Now your files are in the Onedrive Root folder, Spotlight Indexing works again and Quick View works.
- 1. How come this new "File Provider API" doesn't affect other competing businesses like pCloud. Sync com and especially Tresorit? I've contacted Tresorit about this as they already have a working Apple Silicon app, and this was their response "We have received a reply from the development team. At this time, we do not anticipate any problems with the 12.3 update, but if there is a problem, we will treat it as a priority and fix it immediately. If you run into any bugs, please feel free to contact us either here on Facebook or via email. "
2. How come they can still use the regular way of syncing local files and ALSO have a separate cloud drive available?
3. From your update blog post," That said, external drive support as it exists today is implemented differently than it was in the past because of how File Provider works. Very few users are running this configuration, but for them, it's an important scenario because often their content won't fit on the home drive.".
"Very few users are running this configuration " - I find this hard to believe, or bending the truth like Apple does when they have an issue. Sure, 100mil users is a small number if your install base is 3bilion. But it's still 100 MILLION users that are affected.
