OneDrive newbie

I have resisted using OneDrive for years because way back then it took photos from an amazing vacation off my phone before I was done editing them on my phone. I swear I did not have it set to automatically backup if I was running out of space on my phone, but that's what the customer service person said. And I can't batch download them back to my phone (to my knowledge), just one at a time. Why would a home user want to use OneDrive? Every time I try to open OneDrive to delete files there (just to keep it clean, and yes, not use it) it immediately starts synching to my computer, and if I stop that, I can't see my pictures on OneDrive. It says I have to be connected or something like that. Again, you can tell I'm a newbie because I'm not even sure what to do with it. Any information and advice would be incredibly welcomed. Thank you.