How to add or remove OneDrive in the navigation pane of file explorer in Windows 10

[JamieKavanagh]

OneDrive is Microsoft’s free cloud storage service that offers close integration with Windows products across desktop and mobile. Some love it, some not so much. I use it a lot as a backup for work and am happy to have it integrated into Windows 10. If you’re not so happy with it, here’s how to add or remove OneDrive in the navigation pane of file explorer in Windows 10.

Microsoft OneDrive is certainly not the only cloud service in the world yet they are happy to let you believe it was. They would also let you believe that you cannot disable it or remove it from file explorer. Neither statement is strictly true as I shall demonstrate.

Add or remove OneDrive in the navigation pane of file explorer in Windows 10
1. Open up your notification window and right click the OneDrive cloud icon.
2. Select the Settings tab and uncheck ‘Start OneDrive automatically when I sign into Windows.’
3. Reboot your machine for the change to take effect.

If you don’t want to use OneDrive at all, you can also select Unlink OneDrive in the Account tab.

Use regedit to remove OneDrive in the navigation pane of file explorer in Windows 10
1. Type or paste ‘regedit’ into the Search Windows pane.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}.
3. Change the DWORD setting to 0 to remove OneDrive from the navigation pane. Change it back to 1 to reinstate it.

You can also uninstall OneDrive should you wish through the command line.

Uninstall OneDrive from Windows 10
1. Open a CMD window as an administrator.
2. Type or paste ‘taskkill /f /im OneDrive.exe’. to stop the OneDrive process.
3. For 32-bit Windows, type or paste ‘%SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\OneDriveSetup.exe /uninstall’.
4. For 64-bit Windows, type or paste ‘%SystemRoot%\System32\OneDriveSetup.exe /uninstall’.

You might also like these useful Windows 10 tips:
How to uninstall and reinstall Windows 10 built-in apps
How to set up a minidump for BSOD troubleshooting in Windows 10
How to run compatibility mode in Windows 10

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