Forum Discussion
MicrosoftFiles 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
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.
- 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
Jack Nichols wrote:
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.This doesn't work.
I've marked the root of my OneDrive folder and all the folders within it as "Always keep on this device". A small checkmark icon appears next to each folder, and the tooltip reads "Always Available On This Device". So far so good. A cloud icon with a down arrow appears next to the checkmark, and the tooltip reads "Not Downloaded". These folders are all in my cache path, so they definitely are downloaded. The tooltip is lying. I click the cloud icon, and it changes to a circular pie-shaped progress circle. I wait. The files presumably "download", but also not really, since they're already downloaded. OneDrive shows no progress during this download, and reports "OneDrive is up to date". The faux "download" finishes and I check the folder contents. Everything is there with checkmark icons. The files are indexable by Spotlight. Quick Look works. The cloud with down arrow icon has vanished. All is right with the world.
BUT
I leave my computer and come back a couple hours later. Some or all of my folders that had "downloaded" have now, somehow, inexplicably, reverted to "Not Downloaded" with the cloud and down arrow icon. No changes to my OneDrive were made during this time. I check the folder contents, and anywhere from a handful to over 50% of the files in the folder are displaying the "Not Downloaded" icon. Quick Look no longer works on these. Spotlight no longer indexes these. The files have, without any interaction on my part, reverted to a dataless state. The files are still in the hidden cache path. I go back to the top level and click the cloud with down arrow again to force the "download" to start. The files are, again, not actually downloaded. They are simply copied from the cache path. The down cloud icons eventually disappear and everything is good again. A few minutes to a few hours later, the the down cloud icons return, and I repeat the process. I've probably clicked the down cloud arrows somewhere around 4,000 times in the last three days. I'm at my wit's end. I've uninstalled and reinstalled OneDrive. I've tried the App Store and Standalone versions. I've used the reset script multiple times. I've even deleted every single file and folder in my OneDrive and re-uploaded all 200,000 files (600GB of data) from a local backup. Nothing has worked. The down cloud icons keep reappearing for NO reason. I've lost countless hours to this. I''m going insane. I just switched from being a lifelong Dropbox user to OneDrive three weeks ago. The first two weeks were great. The last week has been hell and I am deeply regretting my decision.
- 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
Ankita Kirti Jack Nichols gacarini Carter_MSFT Where are you? Why have you all gone silent?
Okay, so since we have to manually download everything in our bright new shiny non-automated world:
- If I tell onedrive to make a folder always available locally, does that also recurse through the contents of that folder and download 100% of the contents or do we have to do so individually for every single item in the onedrive folder?
- In my testing, the setpin option listed here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/files-on-demand-mac worked so badly as to be useless. Specifically
- the /setpin option can't be used while onedrive is running, which means to use /setpin, you have to quit OneDrive, then watch it restart and quit every time you use /setpin. This is a *very* bad implementation of a command line feature. Literally makes it effectively useless as a way to speed up pinning things locally faster than clickclickclickclick in the finder. - Will the FileOnDemand preferences key documented here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/deploy-and-configure-on-macos#filesondemandenabled be around for a while or is that going to get stealth deleted too?
The implementation of this decision is to put it mildly, awful. I can't think of a worse way to go about this, and for no real reason other than "The OneDrive Team is very enamored of FoD, so you will be too"
I'm very sure no one on the OneDrive team has to deal with this in a situation with heavily metered, slow, capped internet access, and that limitation in your design decisions shows.
- gacariniThanks for the feedback. Regarding #1, if you mark a folder as "always keep on this device," that will apply recursively to everything below that, including new files/folders that are added. In the FAQ, there's a video showing how to do this for the root of your OneDrive, which has a similar outcome of previously disabling Files On-Demand checkbox.
- And when I upgrade my computer and reinstall OneDrive, will it respect that setting or do I get to do that all over again?
- Jack NicholsHi johncwelch,
To answer your questions:
> If I tell onedrive to make a folder always available locally, does that also
> recurse through the contents of that folder and download 100% of the contents
> or do we have to do so individually for every single item in the onedrive folder?
The setting applies to the folder and all of its children. This is true on all of our platforms.
> the /setpin option can't be used while onedrive is running, which means to use
> /setpin, you have to quit OneDrive, then watch it restart and quit every time you
> use /setpin.
Interesting - this code hasn't changed in a while, other than a minor update to support this update, but we'll take a look.
> Will the FileOnDemand preferences key documented here:
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/deploy-and-configure-on-macos#filesondemandenabled
> be around for a while or is that going to get stealth deleted too?
This key is no longer supported. We'll update the documentation. cc gacarini
Jack- Yeah, /setpin was literally worse than manually downloading every file from the web ui and copying it all over manually.
And of course you’re going to disable the key. Because why would you want OneDrive to not be a complete nightmare in a bandwidth-restricted situation for people who have to have their files local.
You know, so they can be properly backed up. Which by the way, your insistence on fod breaks every backup system on the planet, and no, OneDrive is not a proper backup solution. Man, I can’t wait until someone discovers that FOD means the only way to backup anywhere that isn’t OneDrive is to manually download the file. That’ll be awesome.
I mean for me to watch. It’ll be less than awesome for you when someone discovers that fod means once they deleted it off of OneDrive and your short retention expires, that file they thought they’d backed up wasn’t and now it’s gone forever. Good job.
- If I tell onedrive to make a folder always available locally, does that also recurse through the contents of that folder and download 100% of the contents or do we have to do so individually for every single item in the onedrive folder?
Just another voice protesting this disastrous change.
I spent hours on the phone with a charming member of your Tech support team who had absolutely no idea that this change had happened, and therefore no idea how to solve it. I was on the verge of formatting my machine and reinstalling from backups. I've lost two or three days of work this week trying to sort it out.
Now I've managed to find this, a question. Having only a remote copy of critical work documents is completely unacceptable. I could point our backup tools at the local cache by the sounds of it, but you warn that it might not be possible to use an older backup. Again, completely unacceptable. You've broken compatibility with Backblaze. You've broken compatibility with Arq. You've broken meaningful compatibility with TimeMachine. That's a dealbreaker for any commercial use, surely?
Just an absolute car crash. Unbelievable.
- I'd like to get some comment on this from the OneDrive team. I suspected that the 22.x changes broke compatibility with Time Machine and Backblaze, both of which are crucial to my set-up. Is this actually the case?
Ankita Kirti Why is this thread titled QA? Where are the As?
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.
- 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? - And if you use pipenv or poetry forget it - ALL of you virtual environments have now died as the location has changed.
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.
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.
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 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.
- Wow: now I feel lucky that it's only consuming 2GB of my 16. (Which is, of course, still utterly horrendous.)
- I wanted to add some thoughts/deficiencies on OneDrive for MacOS:
I work for a large wholesaler with 300+ employees. Our two marketing departments of around 35 people are on MacOS while the rest of the business is on Windows 10.
We've been assessing different tools to migrate off our physical shared drive to get the entire business working on the cloud. We currently have a SharePoint installation and the teams will be trained to use the OneDrive sync client.
However, multiple deficiencies in the MacOS version of the OneDrive sync client are causing us to reconsider our SharePoint/Microsoft implementation.
I don't have to share these, but I think it's in Microsoft's best interest to take note of these deficiencies:
Downloads started by clicking the cloud icon in Finder cannot be cancelled. We've had multiple instances of users accidentally clicking this icon when selecting the folder and then starting a download for an entire Lifestyle image folder containing hundreds of GB of TIFFs. The only way to rectify this as far as we can tell is to uninstall OneDrive and reinstall it. Not ideal, especially when downloads should be able to be cancelled. In our opinion, a basic necessity for a cloud sync app.
There’s no way to prioritise uploads and downloads, meaning if you have lots to upload, you have difficulty downloading working files for other projects. It also means you can't prioritise the upload of critical elements that need to be shared on deadlines etc.
It takes up to 10 minutes just to start uploading even just a 1MB file. OneDrive sync client will be stuck on ‘Processing Changes’ or ‘Preparing to Upload’. Not sure if this is a glitch/bug? Seems consistent across all devices.
The OneDrive folder cannot be moved, meaning it’s stuck in the ‘Users’ folder in MacOS. This means that any linked files in our design teams working files (InDesign, Illustrator, After Effects etc) will be broken. Microsoft have stated that this is an OS restriction (might be the case?), however I know that other cloud sync services such as Dropbox/Google Drive can be moved without issue. Furthermore, when setting a unique folder in the OneDrive sync app, there's no error or notice that it doesn't work. When you select a unique folder for OneDrive, it seemingly works without issue, but it's not until later if you go searching for that folder that you'll realise that OneDrive is in it's default location.
Finder search/spotlight doesn’t work for OneDrive files unless you’ve visited that folder already.
Would love to have a discussion on the above points.- Superb detailed commentary on some of the core issues that I've encountered too. One more to add to this list which I think is important when working with OneDrive at scale is its handling of conflicts. A busy user will see the options and click whichever gets them working again quickly. This is likely within a matter of weeks or months to result in hundreds or thousands of copy files with "-WORKSTATIONNAME" appended to them. There is no way for admins to track this - to my knowledge - nor any way for users to review the duplicates/clashes without it paralysing the main OneDrive sync engine.
JakeFraserIME I am seeing this as well. We're on airplanes all the time and if the Internet drops even for a very short period of time, we now have a handful of files - one from each of us and we need to put them together ourselves.
- 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. - 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.
