Disable OneDrive Windows 10: Removing It via Group Policy

On Windows 10/11 Professional, Enterprise, or Education, the cleanest way to fully disable and hide OneDrive from users — rather than just unlinking an account — is through Group Policy, whether locally via the Local Group Policy Editor or centrally via a domain GPO.

Steps

1. Press Start, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter (or edit the equivalent domain GPO in Group Policy Management if you’re deploying this org-wide).
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > OneDrive.
3. Double-click Prevent the usage of OneDrive for file storage, set it to Enabled, and click OK.

This hides OneDrive from File Explorer entirely and blocks it from being launched, including from within Windows Store apps or the camera roll upload feature.

Important Caveat

Don’t uninstall OneDrive from Control Panel/Settings after applying this policy — doing so can leave an empty, broken OneDrive folder behind in File Explorer. If that happens, reinstall OneDrive from its default location under the Windows system folder and the empty folder will clear itself once reinstalled. To reverse the change, set the same policy back to Not Configured.

The Intune/CSP Equivalent for Cloud-Managed Devices (Updated for 2026)

The Group Policy route above still works unchanged on domain-joined Windows 10/11 Pro/Enterprise/Education machines in 2026. For cloud-managed devices with no on-prem domain to push a GPO to, Intune delivers the same underlying setting rather than a differently-named policy — either via the OneDrive ADMX ingested into Settings Catalog, or directly as the OMA-URI CSP ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/System/DisableOneDriveFileSync, which maps to the same registry value (DisableFileSyncNGSC) the GPO writes locally. If you’re managing a mixed domain-joined/cloud-only fleet, it’s worth confirming both paths land on the same registry value rather than assuming they’re two separate controls. One caveat either way: Intune sometimes gets access to newer OneDrive-related settings before they’re reflected in the classic ADMX/GPO template, so if you’re troubleshooting a setting that doesn’t seem to exist in Group Policy yet, check Intune’s Settings Catalog directly rather than assuming it hasn’t shipped at all.

Resources

• Group Policy
• HowtoGeek