Microsoft starts rolling out OneDrive’s offline mode on the web

Microsoft is starting to roll out a new offline mode for OneDrive on the web for work and school users. It’s part of an ongoing overhaul to OneDrive that’s also seen the cloud storage service updated with an improved UI, folder colors, and much more.

The new OneDrive offline mode will let users of the web side of the service open files that have been marked available as offline and navigate to favorite files and the home section of OneDrive without an internet connection. You can also rename, sort, move, and copy files, and these will all be synced up once you have an internet connection again.

Image: Microsoft

The offline mode also has performance improvements even if you do have an internet connection. Microsoft claims there’s up to 3x faster loading when viewing or interacting with files in OneDrive on the web or from the OneDrive app in Teams or Outlook. “Offline mode uses your device’s local storage to store certain file information such as file name, size, author, last date accessed, etc,” explains Andrey Esipov, a principal product manager at Microsoft. “This is made possible through the OneDrive Sync app, which intelligently stores a cache of your files’ metadata locally.”

OneDrive’s offline mode on the web won’t be available to consumers just yet, but those using a Microsoft 365 business or school account can set up the new feature right now. You’ll need the latest OneDrive sync app for Windows or macOS; then, you simply head into OneDrive on the web in Chrome or Edge, and it will “trigger an automatic one-time set up of offline mode.”

This new offline mode also compliments the existing Files On-Demand feature that’s available in OneDrive through File Explorer or in Finder on Mac. You can now control the Files On-Demand feature within your browser so you can select files to always be available on your computer.