Windows 8.1 is Microsoft’s operating system with deepest integration with cloud services so far. Thanks to OneDrive deep integration, users can have their Windows settings automatically synced (and backed up) in the cloud so they can restore it later when something bad happen to the current hardware.
By default, OneDrive will appear as normal folder in Windows Explorer and we can immediately open files located in our cloud storage. Since there are many “new devices” of Windows 8.1 based on limited SSD storage, many people feels worried that OneDrive will automatically store a local copy of every file they have in their OneDrive account? The answer is no. Those files stay in the cloud. When we access them, Windows automatically downloaded the file and allow us to start working on it. When we save it, it will be saved back to the cloud storage. If we don’t have internet connection, we can still see the file list, their names, file sizes and thumbnails, but we can’t open the actual files. If we want, we can make some of those files “available offline” by right-clicking from Windows Explorer and choose “Make available offline”.
Some of us might be excited with this deep integration, but some others might hate it. I personally find OneDrive is noticeably slow compared to Dropbox. However, it’s not the main reason I want OneDrive off my work computer.
I use different devices with different operating systems due to various reasons (personal, work, study, etc). I use Windows 8.1, OS X Mavericks, Linux, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. This mixed ecosystem made me choose Dropbox as my primary cloud storage. For privacy reason, I choose to sync different folders in every devices because I don’t want my work computer to sync my personal documents, and Dropbox can do that without a problem.
Now OneDrive deep integration becomes a problem because so far I could not find any setting to prevent certain folders in my OneDrive account from appearing in my Windows Explorer. As much as I do think OneDrive deep integration is something nice to have, I have to turn it off in my work computer because of privacy issue. Then comes the next problem. I explored a lot of setting menus and could not find a way to prevent OneDrive folder from appearing in Windows Explorer except by disconnecting the link to my Microsoft Account entirely. I don’t want to do that because I still think some of its automatic setting backup is a good thing to have. I simply want to get rid of OneDrive folder in Windows Explorer.
After a lot of reading, I finally found a way to disable OneDrive integration for file storage and I thought I want to share it here.
1. Open Run dialog by pressing Win+R. Next, type gpedit.msc and press enter. It will open a window called Local Group Policy Editor.
2. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > OneDrive. There should be 3 items in the right panel.
3. Find the item for “Prevent the usage of OneDrive for file storage“. The default setting should be “Not configured”. Double click this item and we can choose 3 possible values: not configured, enabled and disabled.
4. Choose enabled to stop OneDrive from appearing in Windows Explorer. Choosing not configured or disabled will return it to default condition and OneDrive will appear again.
This trick above has been tested in Windows 8.1 Professional with Spring Update applied. I’m not sure whether this will work with different versions of Windows or not.
Using the steps above will totally disable OneDrive file storage. If you simply want to make it disappear from Windows Explorer but still want to be able to use OneDrive file storage, you might want to use these steps instead.
1. Open Run dialog by pressing Win+R. Type regedit and press enter, it will open Registry Editor window.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\ {8E74D236-7F35-4720-B138-1FED0B85EA75}\ShellFolder (use Find or manually open the tree from left panel).
3. Right-click on ShellFolder, then go to Permissions and click Advanced.
4. Click Change at the top.
5. Change owner to your user then press OK.
6. Check the “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” box and “Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this subject” box then press OK.
7. In the original Permissions box, click on your user if it exists (otherwise, click Add and add your user). Check the “Full Control” box under your user and press OK.
8. Go back in the Registry Editor, double-click the Attributes key in ShellFolder and set its value to 0.
9. Restart your computer.
The second list will remove OneDrive from Windows Explorer, but will not prevent files in OneDrive storage from being accessed using other ways.
Sorry Microsoft! :-)
Hi Robert
I was seeing up win 8.1 just now and used custom install rather than express. Thankfully that took me through to one drive install sett settings. I want sure that I wanted it’s ‘capability’ compared with drop box. So having done a very basic search I gladly found your helpful article. Thank you. And I didn’t use the settings which just keep wanting to send all sorts of info to microshaft.