Forum Discussion
MacOS Monterey - Disable Files on Demand
- That sounds strange. I would expect it to be one or the other as you say. On my own Mac running Monterey I cannot duplicate your issue. As you say, you can't disable FOD from the OneDrive client settings but you should be able to do this with a PList as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/deploy-and-configure-on-macos#filesondemandenabled
Same issue here.
Two icons are shown next to the file name
Tootip for icon on the left states: "Shared and Always Available on this device"
Tooltip for icon on the right states: "Not Downloaded"
Likewise, "Files on demand" cannot be turned off.
It seems like a quirk rather than a bug, as if files on demand were turned on automatically.
As a result, spotlight indexing doesn't always work with such files.
Utterly annoying.
Have you managed to resolve this issue? I am running into the same problem with the same symptoms.
Clicking on each "Not Downloaded" icon forces the file system to recognize that the files are local. It does not appear to actually download anything. However, this regularly resets to showing both icons.
In addition to spotlight indexing not working for files that are local but flagged as "Not Downloaded" other programs that require the files to be local error when the files show as "Not Downloaded"
ABCorbettUnfortunately, I have not been able to resolve it. Have been with MS support on this and so far, have not received a solution or a workaround. They did send me the documentation several times to say select "Always on my device" even though, from the beginning, I had told them that it was set (and they had seen that during a remote session).
An additional interesting test when I was with support was that when I disabled internet access, I could click on the "Not Downloaded" icon and was able to get the file locally. So it looks like the file is local but OD is responding to Spotlight/Quick Look that it's not.
For now, I've disabled OD and only fire it up to synch when I start then shut it down once the sync is complete. And once more before I shutdown to synch changes that I have made. Not great for Spotlight and not ideal but until they fix it, the only other alternative is downgrade to Big Sur.
Philip
- "So it looks like the file is local but OD is responding to Spotlight/Quick Look that it's not."
Indeed I'd come to the same conclusion Philip. It seems the file is both here and not here. It's either a bug or a quirk, I couldn't say. The footprint is definitely that of the downloaded files, they are supposed to be there, but the finder will take at least a couple of seconds before the contents of the folder are displayed.
Disabling Onedrive is a bit extreme though, I'm using the stuff for team and client work and all my files need to be updated in real time. I haven't had time to contact support yet, I'll let the dust settle for a while see if the bug is fixed when onedrive is updated and I will call them later if it's still wonky.
- Hi ABCorbett I went for a shortcut by right clicking the desired folders and choosing the "always available on this device" option. It's still erratic though, sometimes it works and sometimes I lose my files and I have to repeat the process. Another issue I have is that it keeps creating supplementary versions of my files for no apparent reasons and deleting the duplicates on the Mac won't have any impact as they keep being recreating. I found a workaround by going to Onedrive online and deleting the online version(s) of the same file. I even had up to 3 different duplicate versions!
Onedrive is definitely unwieldy and bug-ridden. I miss my dropbox days.
