respect metered connections in Windows 10
In Windows 8.1, OneDrive would detect whether the internet connection was a metered (data-capped) connection or not and would automatically pause syncing until it was connected to a non-metered network. This functionality seems to have been removed in Windows 10. Please bring it back.

We recently began rolling out our new metered connection support, which will automatically pause OneDrive sync when a metered connection is being used on Windows 10. Thanks for the feedback!
229 comments
-
Ken Chumley commented
am also on a metered connection and thinking about signing up for Office 365 with the 1T storage. But, it appears OneDrive is the only way to manage the storage. The 1T of storage will end up costing me hundreds of dollars per month in metered connect fees.
Third parties respect metered connections. It seems Microsoft, who invented it, would also unless there are hidden motives.
-
Steve Hart commented
I have set onedrive to run at 1 kbsp up and down for the foreseeable future. I'll likely have to stop using it altogether.
-
Anonymous commented
YES PLEASE!
-
Steve Hart commented
This is beyond a suggestion. This is a no-brainer. Really, what good is designating a connection as metered if onedrive runs in the background? Fix it. Onedrive is broken on 10 and I will uninstall it if it is not fixed right away.
I see this "good suggestion" was made a year and a half ago. OneDrive just chewed up 2 gigs of background data on my PC when I was connected to a metered connection (Jan. 2018). MS should have fixed this by now. The functionality should have never been removed in the first place.
-
Anonymous commented
This is also badly needed when a file setting might be accidentally flipped to cause significant cost.
-
Alex commented
Regularly checking back here every once in a while to be reminded how little MS actually cares about its customers. Ridiculous!
-
Rusty Dixon commented
I am now formally ending all OneDrive usage. I'm going back to either DropBox or Google Drive. OneDrive can't even get this simple thing right. If My laptop supported DX11 I'd just delete Windows altogether and use Crossover by Codeweavers for running MS Office on Linux. As a matter of fact, I might just run it out of a VM rather than deal with OneDrive eating my data.
How long do you idiots at MS need to "Think about it" before you implement this? You have a metered connection designation for a reason, correct? -
Michael Dann commented
This is a mission critical feature that is still not implemented years later.
I cannot use One Drive again until this feature is implemented.
-
Anonymous commented
Just got burnt by this. Used 4 GB after I had paused for 24 hours, but wasn't back to pause again.
My solution is to uninstall OneDrive - Personal and Business. -
Alex commented
No one should even need to write a comment about this, it's so bizarrre!
-
Alec Utin commented
Using Surface Pro 4 tethered to my phone during commutes on a limited LTE plan, so this is a daily reminder for Microsofts lack of understanding for good customer expirience.
-
Frankie commented
This is just a poor experience overall for a couple reasons:
1) Clearly the system knows I'm on a metered connection, which is why we get that popup - so it feels like a waste of everyone's time to throw a notification but not automatically do the work.
2) The popup is not immediate, and OneDrive doesn't even let me pause syncing right away.. it can take a couple minutes or so to "sign in" before the Pause option becomes available - this means I have to keep checking over and over again for a couple minutes so i can Pause it in time before it starts sync and wasting my data before I can stop it.
3) Why are the only options 2/8/24 hours? Why not permanently pause until i'm ready to resume? I'm often on vacation for a week, and need it paused for a week. I'd rather pause it manually until I know I'm on a Wifi network where I can enable it again.
4) Double everything above because I have OneDrive personal and OneDrive business on my computer and need to pause it for both.This has been requested over 2 years ago...
-
Michael commented
Sync-On-Demand should be a thing for metered connections - just specific files as accessed :-)
-
Michael commented
Is there are way to limit file syncing on a metered connection - eg, have the option to still list files on OneDrive, and allow opening of files as required, but don't automatically sync EVERYTHING.
-
BB commented
Why is it taking so long to do this? Windows 8.1 had it, so your developers know how to do it. This thread has been alive for 16 months. At what level of votes will you actually do something?
-
Anonymous commented
The fact that this was removed in Windows 10 is a joke. Please put it back.
-
Anonymous commented
You've been "thinking about it" for more than a year!
-
Dean commented
um. I have 15 GB a month for satellite data, and it costs $30 for 3 GB increments. I flashed through 6 GB in a day without realizing it. I unfortunately had happened to transfer about that much data to my laptop drive right before I went onto a metered network....sigh... - Good to know that Google has this and there is an alternative. - kind of sad, and not sure what data you are looking at to remove such an important feature. Hope that helps.
-
Anonymous commented
I just removed Onedrive from my tablet. Google Drive will get my support.
-
Bill Chesnut commented
Why is this taking so long, you had it in a previous version, you are costing me money and if you cost me enough, I will find another tool, you new pausing feature sucks