MacOS Monterey - Disable Files on Demand

[pdteo]

I use OneDrive to synch all my files with another computer at work and just upgraded to Monterey. I need to be able to search for data in the files using Spotlight/Quick Look etc. so I typically do a full sync and disable files on demand.

Since this is no longer an option with Monterey, I have instead enabled "Always Keep On This Device" from the OneDrive root folder. However, I am now seeing files that are both "Always Available on this Device" and "Not Downloaded". Aren't these two mutually exclusive?

Is there any way to disable Files on demand?

MacOS is 12.1

OneDrive is Version 21.245.1128.0002 (Standalone) with Insider Preview Updates enabled

Thanks.

[#2]

Indeed it looks like Onedrive is definitely broken. Not that it ever worked well mind you. But now, it's completely screwed

[#3]

OK will have a look as soon as I can

[#4]

You need mighty bandwidth for that. We have 1 Gb/s here so my hundreds of GB were downloaded rather quickly compared to you. I know the feeling though. I did as you say and it worked rather well for one or two days. Today was a total nightmare. I started having duplicates and couldn't delete them. Then I moved files and had errors and eventually I lost an entire portion of my client archive. I managed to retrieve it from my time capsule. I will back up everything on an external HD tomorrow or Saturday. I cannot but encourage you to do the same, we're talking data loss now. Will anyone at Microsoft pay attention to this? I think I'll tweet something to them or post something dire on LinkedIn.

[#5]

@Yann Gourvennec, I don't think the files get deleted. They seem to get moved to '~/Library/Group Containers/U<Random Non-sense>OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex'.

Why they are moved here I don't know? Maybe to act as a cache or something?

And then like @JoaoGomes said, your OneDrive directory gets linked to a directory in '~/Library/Cloud Storage'.

As you can see on my computer.

➜  ~ ls -la OneDrive
lrwxr-xr-x  1 jason  staff  51 Jan 27 14:48 OneDrive -> /Users/jason/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal

[#6]

Also affected by this. OneDrive has become unworkable on Mac. Microsoft, please fix ASAP.

[#7]

@pdteo Adding my voice to this. Running macOS Monterey, and OneDrive version 22.012 (Standalone)

Experiencing the same exact frustrations as everyone.

[#8]

Yep, you could call it a cache of sorts. It seems to be a replica of the entire file structure, except it's made up of links which either fetch files from the server, or from elsewhere in one of your internal or externally connected storage volumes – i.e. still your designated OneDrive folder location, now replaced with a combination of a hidden folder and an alias, which looks… really amateurish, unpolished and hacky compared to what we had before.

I honestly wouldn't mind the whole shuffling around of files, as long as it was just cosmetic. Google Drive also changed to this stupid model of sticking some shortcuts I REALLY don't want on my sidebar whenever it loads, because it treats its folders as virtual mounted drives/server shares. But since I keep my Macs either on or asleep most of the time, I just drag those out every time I reboot them. Boom, problem solved!

But the moment I realised OneDrive broke QuickLook – an essential functionality of Mac OS X / OS X / macOS which was introduced with 10.5 “Leopard” and, as such and after FIFTEEN STRAIGHT YEARS of daily use, is now fully baked into my muscle memory –, even for always offline available files, that was the moment I called it quits.

I'm not standing idly by while I wait for either Microsoft, Apple or both to fix such an egregious regression. If this CloudStorage feature wasn't fully baked, whether at the OS level or at the third-party level (and here's why I suspect it's actually the former, without really exempting Microsoft from the consequences of jumping in the bandwagon way too soon instead of showing Apple the finger and ask them to further polish it: it reeks of something hastily ported over to the Finder from the iPadOS/iOS/Files.ipa codebase, where QuickLook isn't really a thing, by young engineers who don't give a d***), it shouldn't have even gotten past the drawing board, let alone the beta or the live stage. Do you guys even test your products?

[#9]

Well this is a complete sh!t-sh0w. I had all my files wiped today, thanks Apple and Microsoft for such a great solution </sarcasm>.

find . -type f -exec head -c 1 {} \;

I set my folders to be "Always available on this device" and forced the sync using the above. This is faster than md5 because it only reads the first byte from every file. That is enough to trigger the sync. MD5 checksum requires all bytes in the file to be downloaded first, and then needs CPU time to compute the checksum.

[#10]

You need to be a sysadmin these days to use cloud sync don’t you? Baffling. I’ll back all my files up on a stupid disconnected hard drive next weekend. One never knows. I lost a whole chunk of my client archive yesterday. Fortunately I was able to retrieve everything from my Time Capsule. Close shave.

[#11]

Well, this morning, I cannot even open files that are "on-demand." Unless I downloaded it yesterday, clicking the cloud icon, I am stuck. Finder appears to be trying to access it but nothing happens.

I would receive advise about what cloud storage is working. I need to change.

[#12]

Today finally I have sorted out many files after two days of struggle. I could not work and go to the office because of these problems. I am suggesting updating the macOS to 12.2 Monterey and then going to your OD on browser and trying to delete all small project files like target folders, etc. the files which are auto-generating and trivial. This will increase the sync speed a lot. Unfortunately, these thousands of small files create too much pain when it comes to syncing. After this cleaning step, download and reinstall OD, link your account and start the sync.

The sync is also not very stable, it is taking too much time and even your click the cloud icon sometimes the OD/OD file provider cannot download the files. I click multiple times that icon to download some critical folders and their contents.

After these, I sent suggestion lists to OD.

- Syncing small files is a very big pain. They should find a way to sync them faster.
- It is nice to have a setting to control CPU usage like (low-medium-high) because it killed the CPU for the last two days.
- Singing in the account takes too much time. It should be fast very fast.
- The download icon is not reliable, I need to click many times to download the files especially higher folder levels it is not working properly. If you click only a single file it does not have any problems.
- Even I have a 500MBit internet connection the download speed was not high. I set the download and upload settings as (Don't Limit) but it took too much time to sync the files. The OD app should open multiple connections to download the files as much as it can.

Now, finally, I saved many files as I see until now and opened some project files. One weird thing is I need to do rollback for the projects which are integrated with git because after these problems IntelliJ (development IDE) and git client interpret that all project files are new.

Good luck to all people who faced and will face these problems.

[#13]

@obaskirt 

Hi there.  I have two Mac's (a 2017 iMac and a 2018 MacBook Air) both running Monterey 12,2.  The 'preferences' on the machines are different.  On the Air my OneDrive still has the option to 'Turn Off Files on Demand@ and on the iMac this option has disappeared..  The Air is running ver 21.230.1206.0004 of OneDrive and the iMac is running ver 22.002.0206.0004 - so the iMac with the newer version is where I have all the problems reported in this thread.  Does this mean that the problem is not with Monterey but with OneDrive?   

BTW, I had a load of aliases (shortcuts) on the desktop of my iMac, which all disappeared too.  Maybe just a coincidence?     

I do agree however it's a real pain as I want to keep files permanently on my iMac but Microsoft seem to be saying no and having closed OneDrive it's been 'processing' thousands of files for hours! 

[#14]

For what it is worth, I have been working with MS tech support. No help but after we worked for an two days, he said he thinks it's a "bug" and he is going to send it up the chain of command for review. Perhaps with enough calls to tech support and enough cases going up the chain, they will modify the program.

[#15]

I lost a large part of the day to try and understand why are my "always keep on this machine" files not keeping local. This is kind a massive showstopper for any regular one drive user on the Mac, IMHO.

In the mean time discovered that there is a developer preview for the M1 - version 22.012.0116.0001. Way faster than the intel version on my M1 MBP. However still the same issues.

Also, when I force a "always keep on this machine" (like 2nd time) on a folder, I get an error dialog: "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application".

A business application with these types of bugs in 2022 is not understandable. Please MSFT fix this!

[#16]

I ran into the same issue, but seem to have corrected it by right clicking the highest folder and choosing "always keep on this device".  The result was having both icons (the check mark and the cloud).  I then left clicked on the cloud for each file or folder and the information downloaded.  When it downloaded, the cloud disappeared and I was left with only the check mark as before and it looks like it is synching as before as well.  Hopefully this will help someone.

[#17]

This was my experience as well. Annoying but not fatal.

Further discussion of the API changes can be found here, as this is due to an upcoming deprecation of the kexts used in MacOS by Dropbox and OneDrive Previously. Comments have further info:

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1828969

[#18]

I was about to write the same exact "resolution" here. You beat me to it.
However!! It is necessary to click each cloud RECURSIVELY. And THAT is the most painful part.
I was able to spend a few long minutes to do so. But I'm sure many people have many many subfolders and it would take an insane amount of time to go through each folder and sub-folder...

[#19]

@raflok 

If you right click the top folder that has all the subfolders enclosed, they will all be downloaded without having to go into every subfolder.

[#20]

After 2 days of total panic and time wasted, everything seems to be functioning now, as described by @Mike_Thomas2030
It wasn't very intuitive to just click on the cloud...
At first I thought, it wasn't working, so I started clicking on each sub-folder's cloud. Only to realize that it takes time to download the content...
Cheers everyone.

[#21]

@raflok 

Correct. Many thank for all above.

However to point out that in the last versions, when you selected "always keep on this device", the file/folder started automatically to download. This behaviour is now different. You have to explicitly click on the cloud to force downloading. Very counter intuitive.

My issue now is ... even if I say "free up space" on a folder ... it does not seem to remove the files from local, as the cloud icon does is not present (some assuming it was downloaded). I tried it on a folder with around 10GB and I see that the space was consumed on the disk.

Again, the separation of functionality between the icon from "always keep/free space" and the cloud icon is totally absurdity.

We should not need kinda like a a binary "truth table" to understand this :) 

So my understanding is:

Icon.              /     Cloud

Not present /      Not Downloaded  = in the cloud, but if you open it will donwload

Not present /      No icon                 = downloaded, but can be remove from local 

Always Keep /     Not Downloaded  = will keep all you open but not auto download

Always Keep /     No icon                 = downloaded, and it will keep copy always synced

What a mess.

Also, I see that reflecting all changes into the icons takes time (even on the M1 version) as the app is doing is file management internally.