How to Turn Off OneDrive Folder Backup in Windows 11

Stanley Ugama
2 min readMar 4, 2024

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OneDrive is an excellent cloud storage solution for safeguarding, updating, and facilitating easy access to your data and memories on all of your linked devices. On a Windows 11 computer, OneDrive is already set up and ready to use.

However, you can download and install the OneDrive standalone app if you’re using any previous version of Windows, such as Windows 7/8 or prior releases of Windows 10. Not everyone is interested in utilizing OneDrive, despite the fact that it is a highly helpful tool for backing up crucial data, pictures, programs, and settings.

OneDrive integration is one of the most frustrating features of Windows 11 for a lot of people, and they want to get rid of it. Even worse, Microsoft OneDrive is simply activated by default in the most recent version of Windows 11 and backs up the desktop, documents, and photo folders automatically.

Although it’s not a bad idea to back up crucial data to the cloud, OneDrive has the drawback of syncing your cloud files to your desktop for easy access.

How to Turn Off OneDrive Folder Backup in Windows 11
This means that the backed-up icons will appear on your desktop if you sign in to OneDrive using your Microsoft account on any other computer. Because just the desktop icons — not the software files — are backed up, double-clicking on those icons will not open anything.

In Windows 11, turn off OneDrive Folder Backup.
Users of Windows 11 desire to disable the OneDrive folder backup feature or altogether remove the OneDrive software for this reason alone. This post will explain how to disable Windows 11’s OneDrive folder backup. Now let’s get going.

1. To begin, click the OneDrive icon in the system tray of Windows 11.
2. On the OneDrive app, click the Settings gear icon at the top right.
3. On the menu that appears, select Settings.
4. On the OneDrive Settings, switch to Sync and Backup.
5. Next, on the right side, click on Manage Backup.
6. On the Backup folders on this PC prompt, toggle off the Desktop, Pictures, Documents, Music, and Videos. Once done, click on Save Changes
If you are using an older version of the OneDrive app, click Stop backup option underneath each folder.
7. After making the change, close the Window.

That’s it! This is how you can turn off Onedrive folder backup on a Windows 11 computer. From now on, the OneDrive client won’t backup any of your files & folders stored on your PC learn more

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