Microsoft is Silently Reversing Some OneDrive Enshittification in Windows 11

When it comes to Windows 11, OneDrive, and enshittification, I’m the canary in this particular coal mine. And I have something new to report.

Last October, I broke the news that Windows 11 was silently enabling OneDrive Folder Backup after the user said no to repeated prompts to do so. The world ignored me, but this problem got so bad that I switched from OneDrive to Google Drive for my day-to-day work: Google Drive, unlike OneDrive, isn’t enshittified and doesn’t harass me when I make specific configuration choices. This is the way software is supposed to work.

Last week, the rest of the world finally woke up to Windows 11 silently enabling OneDrive Folder Backup, so I guess it’s news now. But those reports are wrong in the sense that this isn’t new behavior and nothing has changed: As noted, this has been happening since last October.

Other sites are also reporting that Windows 11 Setup is no longer offering a choice to enable OneDrive Folder Backup and is instead enabling it automatically, forcing users to later find where to disable it after they get to the desktop. But this, too, is not new (nor is it “news”): With Windows 11 version 24H2, the behavior is the same as it’s been for two years: If you are setting up a PC with Windows 11 Home, you don’t get that choice. But if you’re setting up Windows 11 Pro, you do. In fact, here’s the screen: I just saw this with a Copilot+ PC. Nothing has changed.

But something else has changed. It’s just not related to OneDrive Folder Backup in Windows Setup. And while I’m having trouble believing my eyes, and am vaguely worried that even documenting this will cause Microsoft to realize that it made a mistake and then revert it, here goes nothing.

Microsoft’s evil decision to automatically enable OneDrive Folder Backup is part of a broader strategy tied to its semi-forced Microsoft account (MSA) usage in Windows 11. The primary goal is to get as many consumers as possible using an MSA with Windows, and while there are excellent reasons to do so—it’s more secure than a local account, for starters, and also more seamless thanks to authentication pass-through to apps and services—this is also self-serving on Microsoft’s part: Getting you inside its ecosystem allows it to put you in front of upsells (to OneDrive storage, Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, paid Outlook, and more) and it enables a superior form of tracking that helps with its advertising efforts. At least it’s a win-win.

But there are further goals. By enabling OneDrive Folder Backup, Microsoft is putting more of your data in the cloud: By default, the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders are backed up—actually, synced, but that’s Microsoft’s term—to your OneDrive storage. And once that data is in the cloud, you can access it seamlessly from any PC or device—again, a win-win—while Microsoft can use it as grounding for future Copilot-based AI services it will offer (and upsell) to you. This is the real reason Microsoft silently enabled automatic OneDrive Folder Backup in Windows 11, my sources told me in late 2023. It’s all about AI, like everything else at Microsoft these days.

Of course, users who know where to look can still disable OneDrive Folder Backup. It’s just annoying: Once it’s been enabled, and it will be enabled, OneDrive moves the files that were in your local Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to the equivalent folders in the OneDrive file structure. And so when you disable this feature, OneDrive leaves behind shortcut folders in each of the old locations so you can go find those files it moves. That is, while enabling Folder Backup (purposefully or not) moves all the contents from local folders to OneDrive folders, disabling Folder Backup does not do the reverse. This too, is enshittification, a petty little middle finger to those brave enough to screw with Microsoft’s strategy. So it’s on you to move those files back to where you wanted them in the first place. Fun.

Silently enabling OneDrive Folder Backup is but one piece of a broader effort to convince customers to use this feature. When Folder Backup is not enabled, OneDrive will display banner notifications to convince you to change your mind.

It will display notification overlays on its system tray icon so that you click it and see a similar notice about enabling this feature. When you open the Start menu, you’ll see an orange notification overlay on your account image that, when clicked, displays yet another notice about enabling this feature. There are similar annoying notifications in the Settings app, and even a full-screen harassment when after you reboot your computer after installing a monthly security update.

And if you use the Office desktop apps that come with Microsoft 365, God help you if you try to save documents to a folder that isn’t backed up with OneDrive: Those apps display their own annoying notifications too. It goes on and on.

Did I mention I’ve been complaining about this since last October?

I did? Good. Again, my role here is canary.

For the past 10 days, I’ve been using Copilot+ PCs semi-exclusively. Today, finally, I have three of them, which makes for some interesting comparisons. But one of the big stories with these Arm-based Snapdragon X Windows on Arm 11 PCs is that a small subset of apps simply won’t run on this new platform. Among them are apps that require deep file system integration. Like Google Drive, that solution I switched to last October because OneDrive’s cancerous behavior was getting so toxic and annoying I couldn’t take it anymore. You can’t run Google Drive or apps like it in emulation: This type of app needs a native Arm64 port. And Google hasn’t done that yet.

And so I took the path of least resistance. Temporarily, I thought, I would just switch back to OneDrive for my day-to-day work. OneDrive, of course, ships with Windows 11 on Arm, is native to Arm64 on that platform, and works as it does in the “normal” x64 versions of Windows 11. That is, it enables OneDrive Folder Backup for you automatically during Windows Setup if you have Windows 11 Home, and it gives you the choice if you have Pro. If you do have Pro and declined the OneDrive Folder Backup option during Setup, OneDrive will prompt you a few times to enable it. And if you keep declining it, it will automatically enable the feature regardless, ignoring your choice. The enshittification has crossed the x64/Arm64 divide as expected.

Tied to my decision to temporarily use OneDrive again, I’ve also been using Microsoft Word again so I can see how a native Arm64 word processor functions. I had stopped using Word shortly after dropping OneDrive for related reasons: I save by default to the desktop, which is a very specific configuration change I make in that app. But because my desktop folder is not backed up to (synced with) OneDrive, Word keeps harassing me to save to a place that is backed up to OneDrive. You cannot turn off this harassment. So I stopped using Word.

But here we are in July 2024. I have three Copilot+ PCs, all running the latest build of Windows 11 version 24H2 (26100.1000 at the time of this writing). I’ve been nose to the ground, taking note of everything new and different I see on these systems, and writing up a storm. I’ve been super focused on specific aspects of the Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC experience like performance, battery life, and compatibility. But I’ve also been just using the PCs normally, as I always do, getting work done. And over the past few days, I’ve had this nagging, suspicious feeling. And then this morning, I finally realized what was happening.

Something has changed.

I noted above, in some cases, multiple times, that Windows 11—no matter which version or, now, which architecture you’re using—has engaged in various customer-hostile behaviors since at least last October (some are older). The behaviors include:

• Automatically enabling OneDrive Folder Backup when you set up Windows 11 Home (but giving you the choice to enable OneDrive Folder Backup when you set up Windows 11 Pro).
• If you say no to OneDrive Folder Backup during Setup (or later disable it), Windows 11 then harasses you via several entry points in the system to enable OneDrive Folder Backup.
• If you keep saying no to these prompts, Windows 11 will silently and without warning enable this feature regardless, ignoring the choice you made.

This all still happens.

But as noted, something has changed. Earlier in this article, I noted many/most of the ways in which Windows 11 (and Office) harasses you to enable OneDrive Folder Backup. One of those ways is a badge that appears in File Explorer windows when you navigate to a folder that would be backed up to (synced with) OneDrive—Desktop, Documents, and Pictures—if Folder Backup were only enabled. This badge visually pulsates so you see it, and it exhorts you to “Start backup,” and if you click it, you’ll enable OneDrive Folder Backup.

That is not happening anymore.

That is, instead of that “Backup” badge, the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders in File Explorer simply the normal folder badge. Which looks like so:

To be clear, this is what these folders looked like in File Explorer before Microsoft started its OneDrive enshittification campaign in Windows 11. It’s been so long, I had trouble believing I was seeing it.

Oddly, the growing suspicion I had that something had changed wasn’t about OneDrive, it was Word: As noted above, Word, like the other Office apps, harasses you when you don’t save to OneDrive. But I’ve been saving to the desktop, which is not backed up to (synced with) OneDrive. And Word has not been harassing me. Not even once.

And now I’d seen this behavior across the three PCs. Three Copilot+ PCs. Three Copilot+ PCs on which I am signing in with an MSA on two and a local account on one. And in each case, I see many of the harassments described earlier. But not all of them.

Something has changed. Or as we say in the Windows community, something happened.

Word is not harassing me on the three Copilot+ PCs, even though I’m saving to the local Desktop folder.

And File Explorer is not displaying that “Start backup” badge when displaying the local Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders, on those three Copilot+ PCs.

There are likely other things missing: I don’t see a Start menu-based harassment either, and Settings is not pointing out the error of my ways. I can’t recall seeing any OneDrive banner notifications or notification overlays on its system tray icon. I am confused. After all, Windows 11 did silently turn on OneDrive Folder Backup on the PCs I signed in with an MSA. But once I disabled that … the harassment ended. That was not the case before.

But I had questions to answer. The two most obvious being:

• When did this happen? Is this behavioral change tied to a specific build of Windows 11 version 24H2 (or otherwise)?
• Is this change limited to Copilot+ PCs? That is, will this happen on x64-based PCs too?

I have many computers here so I figured I could answer these questions, at least to some degree.

Unfortunately, 2 of the 3 Copilot+ PCs I have were tampered with by the PC makers. That is, Lenovo and HP both updated their review unit PCs before I got them, so I didn’t experience the same new PC experience that buying customers did, but instead got an updated build of Windows 11 on each. In the HP’s case, it was oddly on build 26100.1000, which is only available to the public if you install a preview update. I looked through all my screenshots across each of these PCs, and I can’t find one showing what any of those folders looked like previously. So I had to turn to my x64 PCs.

The initial build of Windows 11 24H2 was 26100.712. Well, it would have been if Microsoft hadn’t stripped Recall out of the product at the last minute. So the initial build of Windows 11 24H2 became 26100.863. This is the build you get if you install the June cumulative update, which shipped the same day that Copilot+ PCs launched: Buyers of those PCs were prompted to install the build immediately. If you installed the most recent preview update, you’re on build 26100.1000. If you didn’t, you’ll get that build (or an updated build) on Patch Tuesday, July 9.

The change happened somewhere in there.

To prove that to myself, I found an x64 PC running Windows 11 24H2 build 712. On the PC, the OneDrive behaviors are what I’ve been complaining about since last October. Full harassment mode.

So I updated it, installing the June cumulative update and upgrading the build to 26100.863, the initial shipping version of that OS version, as I think of it. And on that PC, I saw the new behavior: Even though Folder Backup was disabled, the three default folders OneDrive wants to back up were not displaying the “Start backup” badge.

So it’s not just Copilot+ PCs, or Windows 11 on Arm. This behavior is universal to Windows 11 version 24H2, starting with build 26100.863.

And … then it gets weird.

I’m me, so I needed to replicate this across multiple PCs. So I started that process and I discovered one x64 PC, a desktop PC, not that it should matter, that’s already on build 26100.1000. It’s using an MSA sign-in like almost all my PCs. OneDrive Folder Backup is disabled. And yet … the “Start backup” badges appear in File Explorer.

Wa-waa-wahhhh.

I can’t explain this. These days, I can’t explain much. But based on prior OneDrive and Windows 11 behaviors, which seem to be sporadically rolled out, all I can do now is guess that that’s what’s happening here. The change is on some PCs and not others. It will come to the others over time. It’s just a guess, yes.

And what about Windows 11 versions 22H2/23H2? Will hey, too, benefit from these changes? I will need to test this as the PCs I use most often are all on 24H2. But it’s possible that the June preview update for these versions makes this change there as well. Or that a future monthly update will. After all, Microsoft is shooting for identical feature sets across 22H2, 23H2, and 24H2.

I still have questions. There are inconsistencies. And with the understanding that this could easily change yet again, it appears that Microsoft has, for whatever reason, taken two steps back from the enshittification cliff that has engulfed Windows 11 users since October.

Now I’m curious what a clean installation of Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.1000 might look like. I don’t expect the Setup experience to change per se—Folder Backup auto-enabled for Home users, a choice for Pro users—but what happens after that? Will Windows 11 … not silently enable Folder Backup? Is that too much to expect? Probably. And this will be difficult to test. But, again. Something has changed. It’s minor. But it’s positive. These behaviors were the reasons I dropped OneDrive and Word, respectively. If Microsoft scales back these terrible behaviors enough, I could … come back.

It boggles the mind. But that’s what I’m seeing and where my head is at right now. I’ll keep digging and see if there are any other changes now and in the future. And I’ll eventually get a clean installation going of a newer build, too.

For now, this feels like we might be seeing the start of a small but significant victory for respecting the customer’s choices and de-enshittification.