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I'm using Windows 11, and I have Onedrive set to sync Desktop and Downloads. I don't like this feature, because every time I put a 1 gig file on either folder it instantly starts syncing to my Onedrive, which only has like 1 gig capacity. When I went to one-drive settings and "Choose folder", I tried unchecking Desktop and Downloads, but it says "Can't stop syncing this folder".

The way around this is to instead put it in a subfolder (and not at toplevel in these two things), but that's inconvenient and easy to forget.

How do I stop syncing Desktop and Documents?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Original answer, preferred: In order to be able to uncheck the folders in "choose folders", I needed to go to onedrive settings -> backup -> manage backup, then was able to stop backing up Desktop, Documents, and Pictures. Once I stopped that, I was able to uncheck the folders in "choose folders". This was highly non-obvious.

EDIT August 2022: I ran in this issue again and had a completely different solution that also worked: in choose folder (though the original answer above is still preferred because it's a more direct method that directly addresses the root cause). You can't uncheck the Documents folder itself due to "can't stop syncing", but if you EXPAND the folder you'll see a checkbox titled "Files in Documents" or something like that. I was able to uncheck THAT, and that also automatically unchecked Documents. I repeated for the other folders and it worked fine.

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  • Yes, if you have enabled back up function, it synchronizes Documents, Pictures, and Desktop folders, you need to disable it first to select which folder to be synced.
    – Emily
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 9:35
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This is an old question, but to anyone who needs it/visits it, this is how I did it.

  1. Right-click and go to the properties of the Desktop folder.
  2. Go to the Location Tab.
  3. Click "Default" which changes the Desktop Location from C:\Users<username>\OneDrive\Desktop to C:\Users<username>\Desktop (Or choose another location of your choice, and press apply).

This should mode your Desktop out of OneDrive while keeping your Desktop contents.

Pro Tip: If you use the same account on multiple machines, do keep the other machines offline till you complete this procedure on all because as soon as you do this on one machine, OneDrive will delete the Desktop folder from all other machines.

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  • /facepalm. Microsoft, how incompetent can you get?
    – OldTimer
    Commented Jun 9 at 19:02
  • This is the right answer. It's hard to believe that Microsoft would establish this insanely ridiculous process that is certain to result in data loss for the vast majority of users. I can imagine the despair of poor developers who were ordered by management to enforce this, in the hopes that it drives One Drive usage.
    – Ataxias
    Commented Jun 30 at 1:53
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Disable "backup" and you can disable "Files not in a folder" which might equate to Desktop - although that is not explicit nor necessarily confined only to files on the Desktop.

I'm still unclear what is the difference between syncing local folders to OneDrive cloud and "backup".

@Emily: "simply disabling the desktop folder backup leaves you with an empty desktop!" Yes. OneDrive snatched up sensitive and important files from my Desktop to the cloud - an unwelcome invasion and unexpected security risk. Unexpected because I had managed to remove any other locations from sync except for Documents and Pictures - only because I was unable to deselect them.

The only thing I want OneDrive for is to sync OneNote - both being MS products I assumed they might be the best combination.

When I found the function to deselect backup for desktop, it immediately deleted all files from the cloud AND the originals it had pilfered from the Desktop. They were not in the Recycle bin - just deleted from my local machine entirely. Like an automated anti-backup triggered by declining the unwanted backup to cloud option. I did manage to retrieve them from the OneDrive Recycle bin.

The deletion of all files on the desktop being so blatantly unsatisfactory to the user is the only thing that validates any sense that this universal operation is as I'm sure they would argue their standard and familiar practise of programmatically routine incompetence and not the basis of cyber crime. Uncannily similar as they appear in operation.

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Onedrive has lots of restrictions to prevent you from stopping synchronizing directories, even if you canceled the backup options, you may still not be able to unselect folders if the folders in your local machine contain some files that are not uploaded to onedrive. I found a most convenient approach to solve this problem:

  1. go to OneDrive webpage, delete or rename the folders you want to stop synchronizing.
  2. move the folders to other places in your local machine
  3. unselect the folders
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  • and simply disabling the desktop folder backup leaves you with an empty desktop! well done Microsoft
    – U.V.
    Commented Mar 4 at 22:27

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