As a reminder, you can always just uninstall OneDrive and call it a day.
Until Microsoft takes that option away as well…
Yeah, it’s also not “just” if it’s one of what feels like hundreds of steps now to make the OS somewhat usable.
I did that and it was a mess, with warnings about being unable to backup that I couldn’t get rid of. I had to reinstall to try to turn off syncing, then remove again. But it’s so integrated that my desktop is still under a OneDrive subfolder and it’s still referenced in various places.
Is there a guide to completely removing this from Windows 11 cleanly?
It’s ltsc an option for 11 like it was for 10?
No idea but, after a quick search to learn what this is, I’m not sure how it would help were it to be an option.
You can disable so-called essential components and I believe it ships without almost any of the bloat. So essentially you could just take one drive out, or not have it in the first place. Or at least that’s my hope
Or just reinstalls it in the next update.
They never reinstalled OneDrive after an update… yet
(I hate how I have to uninstall useless shit after updates)
Not surprised.
Please do not resist, it’s for your own safety.
Pretty sure later updates for Windows 10 started doing this too, or at least it did on my PC.
Had to completely uninstall OneDrive to get it to stop - which Microsoft sure do make quite difficult to do.
I thought it already did that
Yep, lost 3 months of work yesterday because OneDrive erased it.
- Not even once.
Thank you steam deck for teaching me the basics of Linux
Brb uploading a 5GiB file from /dev/urandom to make sure there isn’t a byte of space left in OneDrive for them to do this to me.
Mmm linux sounding so good lately
Doesn’t Windows 10 already do that? I could never get the freaking thing to leave my files behind and disable itself.
Windows 10 LTSC for the win if you have software you can’t yet abandon.
As a workaround with the default directory fuckery, I always just made new ones.
I was in court the other day and it turns out that while they send us the evidence videos encrypted (and never give us the right password), the government’s lawyer had it all on onedrive 🫠
devil’s advocate: this will save the vast majority of user (which are completely tech illiterate) from loosing their most important data
lets be real, none of them will use a private or foss backup solution any time soon.
I’d rather not they loose their important family photos for that oh so horrible crime of offending my privacy nerd sensibilities
I think that it’s quite bad if Microsoft puts peoples family photos on their servers without the user realizing it. That’s not a niche privacy nerd sentiment, I think that a lot of people would find that creepy. Having the option easily available can be really good for a lot of non-techy people but it should be very clear what stays on your computer and what doesn’t, and how to keep something private if you want to, which I’m not sure that it is if Microsoft quietly backs up Documents, Pictures etc.
Right, I recall news from years ago where a bunch of celebrities’ very private photos backed up to iCloud were leaked. They may or may not have known they uploaded those to iCloud, I dunno. But imagine what’s up there if you don’t realize you’re doing a backup. Not just photos, but like scanned documents with vulnerable information. And all that personal info in a centralized server is a big ol honeypot for a malicious actor.
It’s not hard to see why this is a vulnerability, is what I’m getting at.
The problem is that they are not actively asking permission.
They are technically legally asking permission through the EULA, but nobody reads these.
Apple do this differently, they require the user to opt in for each of their services, and except for a pitiful amount of storage, the user has to pay for a useful amount of storage. This makes the user the customer, instead of the product. They could make it easier to roll-your-own “cloud” storage by NAS, but I assume that it isn’t worth their effort.
Counterpoint: My sibling had their goddamn desktop ransomewared by this thing when they dared to uninstall it. It isn’t privacy nerd sensabilities, Windows now behaves like malware under certain opaque conditions and at unpredictable intervals. This was four years ago on Win 10. How great do you think non savvy people are about clicking things they don’t understand anyway and essentially springing a trap?
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Except it won’t be their most important data. Either their very first files from their desktop (up to 5 GB), or random 5 GB files (no idea which). Once it’s filled quickly, it will start nagging about buying more storage.
I’m not confident my tax documents aren’t saved to my dektop.
I usually air gap onto an external disk, but I’ve been busy recently.
Actually, my father in law just lost 3 months of work yesterday because he synced his documents folder that had an old copy of his book on OneDrive. Maybe if OneDrive was made well, it would prevent data loss.
You can’t make this shit up
Isn’t apple doing the same?
Designed to fill the 5gb immediately so you’re going to buy more cloud space immediately
When I had an iPhone, there was an annoying red dot on the settings icon “warning, you didn’t enable cloud backups for photos”, and if you enabled it become an annoying red dot “warning you ran out of iCloud space”
It’s not an Apple fanboy but imo it’s a lot more transparent on their side. There’s a switch for each and every service to use iCloud or not in the settings. Services don’t just re-enable their usage of iCloud after some random update and most importantly, they don’t just re-install apps you previously deleted. Or bloatware.
Yes, it doesn’t get re enabled but I totally hate that annoying red dot on settings if you don’t set iCloud
Oh no, an annoying red dot. Microsoft are straight up hoovering up users data into the cloud by automatically enabling syncing. These two things are not even close to the same.
I really like Jobs-era Apple and hate M$, but didn’t feel the urge to defend A this time.
it’s a dark pattern deliberately chosen to let people get annoyed and pay for icloud. On windows people instead will accidentally fill their onedrive account and that’s it. They won’t even know that they’re using it. It might send some scary emails like “your cloud backup is full!!!11 you gonna lose everything!!111” but those go directly in spam. Error messages in windows for regular users appear like “����� �������� �����������” - their eyes don’t have the right encoding to understand the message, so they just click OK and dismiss it. Instead, the red dot is prominent in the home screen of every iphone and bother also those that don’t read the error messages…
Wow. I genuinely can’t believe people are upvoting you for this. Like yeah, I super agree it’s a dark pattern. Stealing people’s data is WAY worse though, uploading potentially sensitive photos or documents to their cloud with no user input. But according to you that’s fine because it’s less obtrusive and annoying? Yeesh I’m glad I don’t have your priorities.
Edit: Like, have you seen most people’s home screens? They’ll have a dozen other “red dots” and it becomes part of the background. In the same way as you talk about with Windows errors. Here’s mine:
Oh noooo, a red dot on the Settings app…with all the other red dots…
For me it was annoying enough to switch to android. I really felt like I had to use iCloud, forced through my throat. I have ocd and a red dot means “I need to open this app immediately RIGHT NOW to clear it” - and then your can’t clear it until you subscribe
There should be an option to say “I’ve read it and I decided against it” that makes the dot disappear.
Yes. I completely agree that there should be. However the other poster’s claim that it makes Apple just as bad as Microsoft turning a syncing feature on without user consent is ludicrous imo. That just feels like giving them a free pass on what is, I believe, an as before unseen escalation in the erosion of user privacy by large corporations.
That red dot should disappear if you disable iCloud (yes, it is different from not setting it up… it is not good, but you can get rid of it)
There’s always the option to store things locally. You want to get fancy, you can set up a NAS for remote access.
Saying “isn’t X also doing Y” implies the behaviour itself isn’t the problem, when it is. Doesn’t matter who’s using dark patterns for rent-seeking; it matters that we’ve normalized it.
I already have one drive. It’s installed in my PC. Why would I need another?
