Limit OneDrive transfer rates on Windows 10
Microsoft has started to roll out an update for the native OneDrive implementation of Windows 10 that allows users to set download and upload transfer rate limits.
Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system ships with OneDrive synchronization built-in, and it is used automatically if users sign in to the operating system using a Microsoft Account.
While that is comfortable at times, it caused issues under certain circumstances especially when larger files or collections of files were uploaded to the service.
The current stable version of OneDrive ships without rate limit options which means that it can slow down other Internet activities on the computer when transfers are in progress.
The issues is mostly experienced on systems with slow Internet connections as most or even all of the available bandwidth may be used by the OneDrive process.
Limit OneDrive upload or download transfer rate
Microsoft is rolling out an update to the native OneDrive client on Windows 10 that introduces the new rate limit feature to the application.
It seems limited to Insider Builds currently, and is not available on all systems yet.
The feature will be part of the upcoming Anniversary Update for Windows 10 that will be out at the end of July 2016.
To limit upload or download transfer rates using OneDrive on Windows 10, do the following:
- Locate the OneDrive client icon in the Windows System Tray area. If OneDrive is not running, tap on the Windows key, type OneDrive, and select the OneDrive desktop application from the results.
- Right-click on the OneDrive icon and select the settings option from the menu that opens.
- Switch to the network tab when the settings window opens.
- There you find options to set upload and download rate limits individually.
- You can keep the setting at don't limit to let OneDrive handle the rate automatically, or switch to limit to, to set a rate in KB/s.
You can use the same menu at any time to reset the transfer rates or change them.
Please note that the change affects only the desktop version of OneDrive and not the universal app that Microsoft released this month.
It is rather surprising that such a basic feature is not part of OneDrive for Windows 10 already especially since other sync clients have supported the feature for years.
Now You: Does your sync client support transfer rate limits?
Limit? I can barely get it past 2MB/s. Makes doing my backups, at least initially, really slow. Thank goodness for Arq.
Yandex.Disk can ‘limit speed to one connection.’
But more importantly, I wish I could just get rid of OneDrive completely on my 8.1 computer, I have no use for it. I only got so far as ‘disabling’ but it does still check if there’s something to sync (?) because I’m seeing the two circled arrows in the system tray sometimes.
you have to disable or delete it’s service using command prompt. if you disable the service it will stay off till you say otherwise but if you delete the service it will be gone from that version of windows forever. the application will never run again if you wish it or applications that rely on it will never work again without reinstalling your machine.
That s because, unlike Dropbox, OneDrive doesn t have a QoS-like feature built in that could limit the upload speed to a certain rate.
I disabled sync to One Drive in Win 8.1 as well as disabling One Drive (Group Policy) – maybe someone knows the registry hack if needed. Hope this is helpful.