De-Enshittify Windows 11: OneDrive ⭐

Note: This is an early peek at a chapter from my next book, De-Enshittify Windows 11. This book will be available for purchase soon, hopefully by the end of February. –Paul

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OneDrive is Microsoft's cloud storage service for consumers and a key integration in Windows 11 when you sign in using a Microsoft account. But Windows 11 auto-enables a OneDrive feature called Folder Backup without telling users that it is doing so, to drive customers to subscribe to Microsoft 365, which includes additional OneDrive storage over the 5 GB provided to all users.
The problems with Microsoft auto-enabling OneDrive Folder Backup
In Windows 11 version 25H2, Microsoft has subtly changed how Microsoft OneDrive Folder Backup works. And though some of the changes are improvements over the previous behavior, problems remain. Among them:

OneDrive never tells the user that it is enabling Folder Backup. OneDrive will silently enable Folder Backup, which syncs the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders on your PC to the corresponding folders in OneDrive, without informing you.

You may not want OneDrive to sync the Desktop, Documents, and/or Picture folders to OneDrive. Depending on how you work, you may not wish for all the files and folders in the Desktop, Documents, and Picture folders to sync to the cloud. Regardless of how you work, these folders often contain files that shouldn't be synced to all your PCs and other devices. For example, many games save game data to your Documents folder and syncing that content to the cloud unnecessarily takes up storage space and may lead to you needing more storage. Which you have to pay for.

When you disable Folder Backup for a particular folder, OneDrive asks you where to put the content in that folder. This sounds like a good idea—you can choose to keep the content in OneDrive or move it to the local version of the folder on your PC—but it's half-baked. When Windows 11 silently enabled Folder Backup, it commingled the contents of the local folders with the content of the OneDrive-based folders. So when you choose to reverse this change, OneDrive prompts you where to keep the content. And all the content in each folder, including whatever was already in OneDrive, will be moved to the location you choose. If you choose to keep it on your PC, you may not have enough storage space. And the files and folders are all mixed up with whatever was in OneDrive already.
ℹ️ More info: In previous versions of Windows 11, Microsoft would prompt you to enable OneDrive Folder Backup during Windows Setup when you first configured the PC and later using a pop-up notification. Then, it would simply ignore your choice and auto-enable Folder Backup if you declined the offer previously. In Windows 11 version 25H2, Microsoft no longer prompts you to use OneDrive Folder Backup. Instead, it simply auto-enables this feature after you sign in to Windows 11 with a Microsoft account.

? Uninstall OneDrive
OneDrive is useful for...