Doing work and mission critical stuff with Dropbox from day one, andd it's been flawless. Didn't have experiences with OneDrive, but iCloud... wouldn't touch it with a remote stick, with its nonexistent syncing, missing files and poor speeds.
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OneDrive Mac Users Unhappy With Buggy Update That Removes Ability to Keep Local Copies of Synced Files
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Doing work and mission critical stuff with Dropbox from day one, andd it's been flawless. Didn't have experiences with OneDrive, but iCloud... wouldn't touch it with a remote stick, with its nonexistent syncing, missing files and poor speeds.
I am able to add the sync root and cache folder to my favorites in Finder. I have the cache folder there only for investigation purposes. I'll remove it soon to ensure I don't actually use it.
I can add the sync root to my Finder favorites either by dragging the ~/OneDrive symbolic link or ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive directory to the sidebar.
Just to be sure I'm not confusing anyone, ~/Libary/CloudStorage/OneDrive is the Finder's presentation of that directory. In terminal it is shown as ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal (at least on my computer).
Looks like there's an update on what's going on from Microsoft:
microsoft-responds-to-onedrive-mac-user-criticism-following-decision-to-enforce-files-on-demand-feature.2333594
microsoft-responds-to-onedrive-mac-user-criticism-following-decision-to-enforce-files-on-demand-feature.2333594
iCloud or iCloud Drive?
Whilst I am aware that iCloud synching between stock apps (reminders, photos, notes, etc…) sometimes can be problematic, my (short lived yet) experience with iCloud Drive is that it syncs immediately, accurately, with full visibility of progress and at the maximum speed allowed by my internet connection.
Sorry, I meant iCloud Drive. Approximately 70-80% of my daily work goes via DropBox (sharing, collaborating, uploading and downloading loads of files, working directly in cloud), I've tried this a bit with iCloud Drive and Google Drive and it was no go for me. Aside from lacking some options, they were too unreliable for my needs with syncing, speeds and overall integration in MacOS and Windows.
It's not just file syncing that's an issue. there's a few knock-on effects that I find extremely annoying. For example, i can't preview files by clicking the spacebar any more because they're not download. And i can't simply drag files into the synced folders either.
Overall the changes are terrible from a user experience perspective!
Screw Apple for imposing these changes - do they think this makes people more likely to ditch OneDrive and go with iCould? OneDrive is integrated into Microsoft's 365 products and millions use it for the convenience of sharing files with colleagues, many of whom aren't on MACs
Overall the changes are terrible from a user experience perspective!
Screw Apple for imposing these changes - do they think this makes people more likely to ditch OneDrive and go with iCould? OneDrive is integrated into Microsoft's 365 products and millions use it for the convenience of sharing files with colleagues, many of whom aren't on MACs
12.2 with latest OneDrive..
Well I noticed the icon had moved on the left side of the finder window and thought that was a bit weird. Haven’t clocked that the path has changed I will check that.
The ‘experience’ isn’t really very different though was what I meant.. but I wasn’t one of the people that kept only their files locally.
I do have a sub-set of files I keep locally (smaller commonly worked on ones) but they downloaded almost instantly.. larger files like photos I keep up on the server anyway.
So yeah, personally I didn’t notice much which I suspect would be the experience for large portion of the user base.
waaaay back in the day, when iTunes was a one note band, I was using it to upload all of my CD collection so I could play all my music on my devices. Alter an upgrade, some songs were missing!!
I contacted Apple, Their reply:
"So Solly, we make mistake. Songs Gone-Gone. So Solly...."
So I hauled out my CD's, reloaded my library and never truly trusted a Cloud service again.
I use the cloud to store my documents and music remotely so I can have them out of the house. BUT everything is also synced to a disk array in my house.
while i understand they were put in this situation by Apple, there was no warning, and i woke up one day and my files were not on my computer, which is essential for how i work. besides the obvious issue of not always being in a situation with available wifi, even at home it affected how i work. i could no longer search or preview my files in OneDrive on my Mac because they technically weren't there. My entire small business is on OneDrive, how do you think that affected me? it was outright obnoxious and inept of Microsoft to just do this without any warning. what on earth were they thinking? if i can get marketing emails from them, i can certainly get an email saying "we're changing the way OneDrive works, you may experience some hiccups". on top of that, there wasn't even a public PR push, they just did it. Strongly considering paying for Dropbox and dumping Office altogether for Google Drive.
Changes to the way OneDrive syncs files and folders on Mac has caused upset among users of the cloud storage service, following Microsoft's rollout last month of a new "Files On-Demand Experience" for Macs running macOS 12.1 and later.
In a change coming with macOS 12.3, currently still in beta, Apple is deprecating the kernel extensions originally used by OneDrive's syncing features, so the Mac client is now using Apple's File Provider extensions instead. Microsoft says this new technology stack should make the feature "much better integrated with the operating system compared to the first version." Judging by feedback though, that has not been the experience of many users, with slowdowns and bugs variously reported.
Worsening matters, in tandem with the new macOS extensions integration, Microsoft has also made Files On-Demand the default behavior of its OneDrive client. The Files On-Demand feature is designed to allow users to access files in the cloud without having to download them and use storage space on their Mac. Previously, it was an optional feature and users could disable it. However, the latest update has controversially removed the original user setting to disable it, further angering customers who now have no way of keeping local copies of their synced files.
What this has meant in practice for many users is that any local copies of files synced to OneDrive have been summarily wiped from their Mac since the update was rolled out. Responding to the change on Microsoft's community answers forum, one customer complained:
Responding to the question, another user wrote:
Microsoft includes an ability in OneDrive's Finder integration to mark synced files as "Always Keep on This Device" (internally referred to as "pinning"), and some users have resorted to exhaustively re-downloading all their files and folders using this option, but not without a high degree of syncing fails. Another user writes:
On top of these errors, some users are also experiencing problems with files refusing to download or open correctly in their default application. One Redditor posts:
Hundreds of similar complaints about the enforced changes and associated bugs can be found on Microsoft's OneDrive blog, the MacRumors Forums, and scattered over Reddit, with many users saying they will move to a rival cloud storage syncing solution unless the ability to store synced files locally is brought back and the syncing bugs are fixed. We've reached out to Microsoft to provide more clarity on the situation and will update this article if we hear back.
Article Link: OneDrive Mac Users Unhappy With Buggy Update That Removes Ability to Keep Local Copies of Synced Files
They claim that your files were still on your computer, in their cache directory. Even though the sync directory showed a cloud saying "not downloaded", clicking on it to get your file into that directory would not have required a connection to the internet.
Everything else you're saying is spot on.
is the "Always Keep on This Device" working for people????? When I try it, there's always one or two subfolders that end up not syncing and whenever I reboot the laptop its back to square one with all folders and files not available locally anymore
I found another behavior difference. If the file isn't local so it displays the cloud icon, Mac Quick Look doesn't show the full image, it only shows a thumbnail. So you have to click the cloud icon to force it local to get a full preview. Yet another annoyance.
FWIW - there is a new update from OneDrive team coming to help with this:
techcommunity.microsoft.com
Updates to Files On-Demand on macOS | Microsoft Community Hub
Based on your feedback we are releasing updates to Files On-Demand on macOS, that would address most common concerns.
techcommunity.microsoft.com
OneDrive has actually been driving me nuts more and more. Just last week I lost 2 hours worth of project work because my local copy somehow got synced over by an older version and the newer work was nowhere to be found. The last time I had something like this happen was on a Mac in the bad old days (the mid 90s) erasing stuff on my Zip disk for no reason at all.
The end result is that I no longer trust local Office to open the most recent version of my work, so now I launch all my saves locally from Finder and save manually whenever I think about it. It's ridiculous.
The end result is that I no longer trust local Office to open the most recent version of my work, so now I launch all my saves locally from Finder and save manually whenever I think about it. It's ridiculous.
They don't. Finder/Terminal show the file size, but if you look on the File Info dialog, it shows "Zero bytes on disk."
I recently experienced a data loss edge case. I'm not sure if it affects all FileProvider services or just OneDrive.
I was moving several cloud (not locally downloaded) files from OneDrive into a sparsebundle. The move operation appeared to have completed. However, upon checking the sparsebundle, many subfolders were empty. Luckily, I noticed this, and the files were still in the OneDrive recycle bin. So I was able to restore, download, and then move them into the sparsebundle properly.
I was moving several cloud (not locally downloaded) files from OneDrive into a sparsebundle. The move operation appeared to have completed. However, upon checking the sparsebundle, many subfolders were empty. Luckily, I noticed this, and the files were still in the OneDrive recycle bin. So I was able to restore, download, and then move them into the sparsebundle properly.
Thats a typical issue with moving data to the cloud, and is why its always important to verify the transfer went through. Typically with these desktop apps you make a copy from one location to another, then it actually uploads the file in the background later. It sounds like because you didn't have the full files on your local PC, it moved what it could, then gave up without downloading the rest.
Not "well documented" is an understatement. Weird we have to come here (unlike zillions of others who (or will soon realize they) are at sea on this, for a tutorial on the issues. ✔ or ✅ or ✓ ? we are all checkers. Thanks.
I am so tired of this stuff Microsoft keeps doing to screw Mac users. Is it so we stop using our Macs and buy a Surface pad? Windows used to be an operating system, but now it's more like a virus. Try deleting anything you don't want and it keeps coming back or they won't let you delete it at all.
So, now I'm using either Dropbox or iCloud as the place where I saved all of my Excel and Word docs and then took them off of OneDrive. Now I once again have local copies of files that sync with a cloud copy and I can access from other devices. It's functionally everything OneDrive used to be before Microsoft ****ed everything up. Just don't use OneDrive unless you want you data stored in the cloud with no current local copy of it.
So, now I'm using either Dropbox or iCloud as the place where I saved all of my Excel and Word docs and then took them off of OneDrive. Now I once again have local copies of files that sync with a cloud copy and I can access from other devices. It's functionally everything OneDrive used to be before Microsoft ****ed everything up. Just don't use OneDrive unless you want you data stored in the cloud with no current local copy of it.
I agree. You’d think Microsoft of all companies would understand this. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than Finder or Windows Explorer in the cloud. Dropbox had it right to begin with, Apple got it right pretty quickly after a rough start, but OneDrive remains a mystery to me. It mostly works right, but I can’t trust mostly when it comes to the kind of files I’m required to keep in OneDrive. They have to be up to date and accurate at all times because of the number of people I need collaborating on them. And MS renames, rebrands, regroups, and repurposes their software and services so much, I still honestly can’t tell you what the master copy of any of my MS files truly is.
It’s really a shame, because I think Microsoft’s software aesthetic on macOS and iOS/iPadOS is quite nice. Their apps, for the most part, really feel like they were made by a team that cares about what they are doing. For example, OneNote is probably my favorite interpretation of a ”digital notebook” out of all the note taking apps I’ve used—a true highlight for iPad/Pencil users (No pun intended there). But then I can’t trust the underlying file system and that’s super disappointing and a major reason I would never subscribe to their software out of my own pocket.
The problem is that if you use MS Office (as I have to do for work), no other cloud-based storage solution supports automatic, iterative saving. So you're stuck with OneDrive. And I know iCloud does exactly the same for Pages, but I can't use Pages for work.