How to Disable Sync button in SharePoint 2013?

The Sync option in SharePoint 2013 / 2016 enables users to keep copies in sync between SharePoint libraries and the user’s local disk. Once Synced, You get the flexibility to edit documents straight from your local machine.

Clicking the “Sync” button from any document library triggers the client application “SharePoint workspace”, a successor of Microsoft Groove.

Remove sync button in SharePoint 2013:

In some cases, you may want to disable the sync option as per your company policies. Sync option is configured via the “Search and Offline Availability” configuration. Follow these steps, If you want to disable the Sync button in SharePoint 2013 at the site level:

• Go to your SharePoint site Settings
• Click on “Search and Offline Availability” link under “Search” group
• Choose “No” for “Allow items from this site to be downloaded to offline Clients?”. Choosing “Yes” enables the Sync option back.
• Click OK to save your changes.

That’s all. This hides Sync option in SharePoint 2013 site level. PowerShell can be utilized to Turn it OFF/ON globally for the entire farm using:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -erroraction SilentlyContinue

Get-SPSite -limit all | get-SPWeb -limit all | Foreach { $_.ExcludeFromOfflineClient=1; 
   $_.Update()
} 

You can also enable (if its enabled at site level!) or disable (doesn’t matter if its enabled at site level!) sync for a particular SharePoint library .

• Go to Library settings 
• Click Advanced Settings under the General Settings category.
• Under Offline Client Availability category, select No to prevent users from download the documents.