OneDrive Mac sync broken? Reclaim your space by deleting the local files cache!
TL;DR
If you can’t find where OneDrive is syncing files in MacOS, you might need to dive into the Library to find it. This is the location where I found the files: ~/Library/Group Containers/[SomeID].OneDriveClientSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive
Notice Depending on how you installed OneDrive, you might need to check out a different folder:
- App Store version → UBF8T346G9.OneDriveSyncClientSuite
- Stand-alone version → UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite
I strongly recommend being careful with what you do, since messing with the files/folders could lead to sync issues and/or data loss.
A couple of days ago I was downloading photos from a UW Gymdawgs meet, and I noticed that I had to free up a bunch of space in my Mac.
I love the placeholder files that OneDrive offers — I can take a quick inventory of my files without them taking gigs of data. I typically hydrate files I’m working on, then after a while, I dehydrate them (free up space).
As I set them to free up space, I noticed that no new HD space was cleared — it typically takes a couple of minutes (I guess an async job runs), but after a few minutes no additional space was cleared.
This was the first signal that something was off.
Time to get into investigation mode
1. Checking sync status (avoiding data loss)
I checked the sync status and everything seemed to be OK, so checked online and saw all files I wanted to see.
Hmmm.
2. Test creating+deleting a file to see if things are properly syncing
I duplicated a small file, and noticed that the sync status didn’t update. This was my first hint that there was a problem.
3. A fresh start phase 1: Hide folders
I went to the OneDrive settings and chose to hide folders → this makes it so that those no longer show in the local device, but they remain on the web. I was not sure if this would auto-delete local folders that are now hidden.
It did not — I got a warning that the local (unsynced file) had a conflicting name with something already in OneDrive. This makes sense… the local app is trying to sync this folder, but there’s already one in the server.
This was super strange because… it was syncing stuff after all?
4. A fresh start phase 2: Delete local folders
I deleted the local folder, but my disk usage dicreased only a few KBs. Angrily I decided to uninstall OD and start again.
5. A fresh start phase 3: Uninstall OneDrive
I removed OneDrive, and the local folder in Finder showed me an error — suggesting I delete it since some link or reference to this was broken.
YES! Be gone!
After doing this… NO. ADDITIONAL. DISK. SPACE. CLEARED. UP.
Time to go deeper.
6. Down into the Library abyss
At this stage, I realized that somewhere in my hard drive, there was a cache of my OneDrive files/folders that were locally hydrated and taking up precious space.
Thanks to random Stack Overflow, Microsoft, and Apple forums, I put the pieces together.
Findings
- At some point upgrading or messing with my Mac, something broke the OneDrive configuration (my fault, although Microsoft offers a way to recover from these situations).
- The newly synced files were in this path:
~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive
- Depending on how you install OneDrive, there are different Library folders where things are installed — this is because of how MacOS manages App Store apps and stand-alone apps:
- App Store version → UBF8T346G9.OneDriveSyncClientSuite
- Stand-alone version (downloaded from Microsoft.com) → UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite
- The local file cache was eating up almost 2TB(!):
- I also noticed that the new OneDrive entry was no longer created in My Documents — it is now an entry in the left-hand Finder menu in the Locations sections pointing to ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive.
- As I tried to download everything to my device again, I noticed that after ~500GB, OneDrive stops syncing. The error message just indicated that it could not sync, and I should try again later. Digging into the details, it seems like the OneDrive client has a built-in safeguard that limits the transfers per day to ~500GB. You can read some details (and potential mitigation) here — TL;DR: you might need to mess with a config file and update the MaxClientMBTransferredPerDay field.
I’m a Microsoft employee, but even if I wasn’t I’d still keep paying for OneDrive — I love the features, how it blends into my flow, and the fact that I can use it across PC, Mac, phone, etc. I’m a very satisfied customer and I want the team to keep delivering features that make my life better. From what I hear, there’s a ton of cool stuff in the works so I can’t wait to start using those new capabilities.
