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Pause OneDrive Syncing in Windows 10

How to Pause OneDrive Syncing in Windows 10

OneDrive is the online document storage solution created by Microsoft which comes bundled as a free service with Windows 10. It can be used to store your documents and other data online in the cloud. It also offers synchronization of stored data across all your devices. Here's how to pause OneDrive syncing to save your bandwidth in Windows 10.

OneDrive is bundled with Windows since Windows 8. It is the all-in-one solution built by Microsoft to provide the user the ability to have the same files on every PC he signs in with using his Microsoft Account. Previously known as SkyDrive, the service got rebranded some time ago.

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It also offers synchronization of stored data across all your devices. "Files on-demand" is a feature of OneDrive which can display placeholder versions of online files in your local OneDrive directory even if they were not synchronized and downloaded. The synchronization feature in OneDrive relies on Microsoft Account. To use OneDrive, you have to create one first. Besides OneDrive, Microsoft Account can be used to log in to Windows 10, Office 365 and most online Microsoft services.

When you have OneDrive installed and running in Windows 10, it adds a Move to OneDrive context menu command available for files under certain locations included in your user profile like Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.
Windows 10 Move To Onedrive Context Menu

If you are not happy with this menu, you can remove it. See Remove OneDrive Context Menu in Windows 10.

Starting with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you can pause syncing of files and folders on OneDrive as needed. Here's how it can be done.

To Pause OneDrive Syncing in Windows 10,

  1. Click the OneDrive icon in the system tray to open its settings.Windows 10 OneDrive Tray Icon
  2. Click on More (...).Windows 10 OneDrive Flyout More Item
  3. Select for how long (2 hours, 8 hours, or 24 hours) you want to pause syncing.Windows 10 OneDrive Pause Syncing
  4. The syncing is now paused.

You can resume the OneDrive syncing process at any time by clicking on the OneDirve icon in the system tray, and selecting More (...) > Resume syncing or directly from its flyout as shown in the screenshot.

Windows 10 OneDrive Paused Sync Tray Icon

Windows 10 OneDrive Resume Sync

Bonus tip: If you exit the OneDrive app and remove it from startup, this will prevent OneDrive from syncing your files until you start it manually by running: %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\OneDrive\OneDrive.exe.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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