Responding to the question, another user wrote: If Files On-Demand is enforced by policy, I will leave your cloud service once and for all. How I can disable Files On-Demand? Will you please stop knowing the best for your customers? We aren't toddlers. Files On-Demand is also too slow, waiting a second to display folder contents is too much when you organize things in deep folder structures. Also making it impossible for me to do full text searches. What is going on? Why would you enforce Files On-Demand on your customers, isn't it enough to enable it by default? My 70GB of cloud data is not local anymore, sometimes I have no internet, you are locking me away from my files. Responding to the change on Microsoft's community answers forum, one customer complained: 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. 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. Previously, it was an optional feature and users could disable it. 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. Worsening matters, in tandem with the new macOS extensions integration, Microsoft has also made Files On-Demand the default behavior of its OneDrive client. 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.

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.

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.

Change onedrive sync settings mac