Microsoft Preps Native OneDrive Clients for Windows on ARM, M1 Macs

Well, it took long enough, but Microsoft is finally testing native OneDrive clients on Windows on ARM and M1-based Macs. And you can try them yourselves if interested.

“OneDrive sync for Windows on ARM and for Apple silicon is now available as a public preview,” Microsoft’s Ankita Kirti writes in the announcement post. “We know this has been a long-awaited and highly requested feature, and we’re thrilled to make it available for early access.”

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Long-awaited, yes. We’ve been waiting over one year for native OneDrive sync on M1-based Macs, and, what? Forever on Windows on ARM?

To get started with the public preview on Windows on ARM, you need to join the Office Insider program or the Windows Insider program. Then, open the OneDrive client on either platform and navigate to Help & Settings > Settings > About. Then, enable the option “Get OneDrive Insider preview updates before release” (or similar). Now, you’ll see a new option appear in this dialog called “Get the OneDrive app built for ARM64 (or similar). Click the “Get ARM64 build” button to get it.

The Mac instructions are similar. Check out this blog post for more info.

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Conversation 19 comments

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    07 December, 2021 - 9:16 am

    <p>Good timing, my M1 Mac mini has been sitting in customs since last Thursday…</p>

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    07 December, 2021 - 9:20 am

    <p>I wish they had a native Linux client as well. </p>

    • spacein_vader

      Premium Member
      07 December, 2021 - 2:18 pm

      <p>This. Of the big 3 (Google drive and Dropbox being the others,) IIRC they’re the only one not to have a client for Linux. </p>

  • vladimir

    Premium Member
    07 December, 2021 - 9:24 am

    <p>I wish they had a client that was reliable enough on intel machines. I get frequent and random crashes on intel based macs and pcs</p>

    • darkgrayknight

      Premium Member
      07 December, 2021 - 10:59 am

      <p>hmm, I haven’t seen that in quite some time, though I remember that occurring in the early days of Windows 10. I disconnected my accounts and uninstalled, then re-installed OneDrive and reconnected my accounts. It hasn’t had issues since then.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      07 December, 2021 - 12:44 pm

      <p>I haven’t had it crash in years. I can’t remember the last time, probably on my old Surface Pro 3, which I had to replace in 2016.</p>

  • barry505

    07 December, 2021 - 10:03 am

    <p>Try Google Drive.</p>

    • alissa914

      07 December, 2021 - 10:30 am

      <p>I did. Once I did a test sync between my PC and another PC where it would download what was synced. Results were inconsistent and it would drop files at random. Google support told me, "oh, it’s OK… just uninstall and reinstall and it should sync fine." Sure, because that’s why I like…. inconsistency.</p><p><br></p><p>Maybe it’s better now, but I need Dropbox which has never failed for me. OneDrive is there too but Dropbox is for critical work.</p>

      • ggolcher

        Premium Member
        07 December, 2021 - 11:58 am

        <p>I am part of the Dropbox camp. I had originally tried OneDrive since it was included with Office 365, and it gave me so many syncing issues I could not use it.</p><p><br></p><p>Instead, Dropbox has been rock solid through many years, full featured, and very easy to use.</p>

      • barry505

        07 December, 2021 - 4:11 pm

        <p>I guess my point is that Google Drive is Apple Silicon native. And if you don’t need a whole terabyte of storage, they offer a 200mb plan for $29.99/year</p>

  • j5

    Premium Member
    07 December, 2021 - 10:12 am

    <p>Has anyone tried the preview? How is it?</p>

    • alissa914

      07 December, 2021 - 10:31 am

      <p>Signed up for Mac insider builds for OneDrive. It’s ticked and ready for it when it comes. For now, it’s still on Intel build.</p>

      • j5

        Premium Member
        07 December, 2021 - 11:46 am

        <p>Ok thanks for replying. I’d really be interested to hear your take on it once’s you’ve used it. Is it worth installing etc?</p>

    • rob_segal

      Premium Member
      07 December, 2021 - 8:33 pm

      <p>I’m trying the preview after reinstalling it and starting a fresh sync. Icons are a little slow to appear in Finder for folders and files not synced locally. Seems to take a second or two for it to load. Sometimes, there is a small delay or slow down when syncing files. I haven’t noticed any memory usage differences if you’re interested in that. OneDrive starts up at login now which it didn’t consistently do before. I need more time with it though.</p>

  • bkkcanuck

    07 December, 2021 - 11:50 am

    <p>Great, My checklist of remaining apps to be M1-ified is dwindling… the vast majority I have installed are there (I think I have 10 left, 3 dropped off the list in the last week). [I think that is at least 80%+ of my 53 apps in use… are M1 native]</p>

  • jdjan

    Premium Member
    07 December, 2021 - 12:59 pm

    <p>I’m excited to get an M1 native version. OneDrive is one of the few legacy Intel (Rosetta) apps that I rely on. With 800GB of files in my personal OneDrive folder and ~100GB in my work account, both apps chew up CPU cycles, so I hope that the native Apple Silicon versions will run more efficiently and (hopefully) faster.</p>

  • robhalligan

    07 December, 2021 - 3:22 pm

    <p>I’m on my third ARM64 Windows machine. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I’ve synced tens of thousands of files for years</span> with OneDrive on those machines without having any problems that I remember. OneNote pages can get out of sync, but that may be a OneNote problem. (Make sure you give those pages a chance to sync before typing is the key.)</p>

  • IanYates82

    Premium Member
    07 December, 2021 - 3:59 pm

    <p>To be fair, an Intel x64 version only came out a few months back</p>

  • PcGuy8088

    07 December, 2021 - 6:13 pm

    <p>I was using Dropbox on a Ubuntu install and was grandfathered in before Dropbox implemented their 3 devices limit on their free accounts. I had to do a reinstall of Ubunutu and that was when I found out I had exceeded the Dropbox free use limit. Dropbox support told me to get my usage down to 2 devices so I could add the reinstall</p><p><br></p><p>Dropbox charges $13 CDN a mth for 2TB of storage for more than what I even need. No problem I have 1TB OneDrive from Office 365. Bzzt too bad MS still has not released a Linux client.</p>

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