I keep getting notifications from OneDrive that it needs to be set up. I don’t want those notifications! How do I prevent OneDrive from issuing notifications in Win10.1?
Windows really wants to help you keep up with what’s going on with your computer, and of course Microsoft is a happy player in the new world of cloud-based storage. There are dozens of companies that offer you the chance to store photos, documents and other files “somewhere online”, which works great if you have a good Internet connection and trust them to keep your data private and confidential. Microsoft’s version of cloud storage is OneDrive and it’s pretty well implemented, even supporting MacOS X systems and Apple iPads, among its many devices.
But not everyone’s a fan of cloud storage for the reasons highlighted above. The biggest: privacy. Services like Dropbox, for example, don’t hide that they scan files uploaded to check if they’re a violation of the terms of service or violate copyright laws. Nonetheless, I have to say that I still encourage you to use a cloud storage system like OneDrive anyway because even if it’s just old content or ZIP archies, it’s darn useful to have a backup.
For this reason, I’m not going to encourage you to completely axe OneDrive but show you how to turn off the notifications. If you do decide to go with OneDrive, of course, you’ll want to re-enable notifications so it can keep you apprised of changes. But that’s going to be obvious once we go through the steps.
To start, here’s what I see when I don’t have OneDrive set up. First, on the TaskBar:
See the icon with the red “x”? Yeah, that’s OneDrive. Meanwhile, in Notifications:
Okay, let’s turn these notifications off. To do that, use your handy Cortana / Win search feature and search for “Notifications“:
The default choice is what you want: “Notifications & actions settings”.
Choose that and you’ll pop open a Settings window:
Pretty cool that you can rearrange the quick action buttons, actually, so it’s okay if you get a bit sidetracked reorganizing them to ensure your favorites are at the top! Done? Good. Now, scroll down until you find this:
So rather than turn off notifications entirely, it’s smarter to disable specific apps and programs like… well, like OneDrive! Simply click on the slider switch to turn OneDrive off:
And that’s it. Done. Note that the tiny red ‘x’ in the TaskBar won’t go away, but you won’t see any notifications from OneDrive any more. If you really want to get rid of the TaskBar shortcut too, right-click and choose “Exit”. Done. No more OneDrive.
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NOPE! There isn’t even an option in the Notifications settings for OneDrive. MS must have decided that regular users are no longer allowed to change it.
My issue was OneDrive kept asking to update its icons. The one time I did that, it crashed my Win 10. I didn’t want to do such a senseless update, but it bugged me constantly. Sadly, MS is not a fan of allowing us to control our computing experience, as seen by forcing us to link our MS account with Skype, after they acquired it. I’m absolutely not a fan of MS anymore. They are forcing their nose too deep into my privacy.
Had to do the same with my mouse software. Everytime that I was switching my DPI, a notification about it would come up and I hated that.
I’ve tried this and I still get notifications from Onedrive saying “preparing” over and over. Any ideas how to stop this sir?