How To Temporarily Pause OneDrive Sync In Windows 10?

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This tutorial describes how to temporarily pause OneDrive sync in Windows 10. As I’ve stressed upon a number of times in my previous articles, Windows 10’s deeply entrenched OneDrive integration is one of its most important and powerhouse features. Native OneDrive integration automatically (though you can manually do so as well) synchronizes all your important files to the cloud instantly, directly from within the operating system.

While the automatic synchronization is immensely useful, it can also be a little bit of a network hog, especially in cases when there’s a large volume of data being backed up to the cloud continuously.

However, I’ve got some good news for you, people. Windows 10 makes it really simple to suspend the synchronization of your files to OneDrive for a while. Sounds like something you can use? Jump past the break to know how you can temporarily pause OneDrive sync in Windows 10.

pause onedrive sync in action

How To Temporarily Pause OneDrive Sync In Windows 10?

Note: It’s possible to suspend OneDrive sync transiently from both Windows Explorer, as well as the modern style OneDrive app. Both of them are discussed below, one at a time.

Pausing the synchronization of your files to OneDrive temporarily is a straightforward task. Here’s how to get it working:

Method 1: Open up an instance of Windows Explorer. Once there, move over to the navigation pane on the left, and right-click on the OneDrive link. From the context menu that pops up, select the Pause Syncing option. That’s it!

pause onedrive sync from explorer

If for some reason, you don’t dig the super simple method mentioned above, there’s another way to pause OneDrive sync temporarily, as described below.

Method 2: Open the modern style OneDrive app, and click on Settings (from the app’s title bar menu). OneDrive’s settings pane should now slide out from the right. Click on Options to get to the app’s sub-options. Move down to find the option that says Sync files, and toggle it to Off. Equally simple, isn’t it?

pause onedrive sync from app

Also Check: How To Save Documents To OneDrive By Default In Windows 10?

Conclusion

OneDrive integration in Windows 10 makes sure that you can access your files anywhere, and everywhere. While the automated uploading of important data to the cloud does make things a lot easier, it can (and does) put a strain on the network, and in turn, general user experience. The good thing is, you can easily pause (and of course, resume) OneDrive synchronization on the fly. So give it a try, and let me know what you think of it in the comments section.

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Works With: Windows 10
Free/Paid: Free

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Ron2017-03-21

Update: Right click on OneDrive icon in system tray. Click on “Pause syncing”. Select 2, 8 or 24 hours.

Seems to have been re-introduced in a recent release. It appears that sometimes MS does listen.

Jose de Leon2016-04-09

Just locate the OneDrive ‘cloud’ icon in the system tray, right-click it and then select ‘exit’. This will effectively pause syncing. You can restart it later by searching for OneDrive desktop app from the windows start search bar and running it.

Jerry El2016-03-19

Yep, sorry I ever signed up for it and purchased LOTS OF EXTRA GB too. I can only get rather slow DSL at home and OneDrive is eating up the bandwidth while I’m trying to visit Web sites or do anything on the Web. I wish it had the option to just sync when not using the computer as I leave mine on 24 hrs anyway and don’t use sleep or hibernate, just screen off. This lack of a “pause” really aggravates me and like someone else says maybe Drop(in the)Box is a better place to cloud your data.

qball1012016-01-23

Yep, removal of this feature by microsoft is a bit of an own goal. I have just stopped it starting when i boot as if there is a large amount of data to sync you can’t even browse the internet while it syncs. if it doesn’t make a reappearance soon i’ll be going back to dropbox.

Dave2015-09-26

This is outdated. I don’t have the “pause syncing” option nor the same option in the cloud app.

AndyBreakaleg2015-08-11

More than “quite useful” - I’d say its essential. I frequently use my laptop tethered to my mobile phones wifi hotspot. If I’ve done a lot of work on my documents the sync eats up significant chunks of my mobile data as well as slowing down my connection to become almost unusable.
Please PLEASE, bring this facility back!

Elliot Gale2015-08-06

boo! microsoft strikes again

Rajat Sharma2015-02-11

Thanks for the comment. And yeah, with the latest build of Windows 10 TP (9926), MS does seem to have removed the option to pause OneDrive sync from the File Explorer. Though I hope it returns in future builds, as it’s quite useful.

Nebes2015-02-10

with build 9926 took away the onedrive app and the option to pause sync from the windows explorer folder per your method…

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