OneDrive for Business: How to Hide Sync Button at Tenant Level?

Requirement: Disable Sync button in OneDrive for Business.

OneDrive for Business is a great cloud-based collaboration platform used to store, manage, and share files. However, there may be times when you need to disable the sync feature. Perhaps you’re working on a project that requires a lot of disk space, bandwidth, or you’re having trouble with syncing. Whatever the reason, let me show you how to disable sync in OneDrive for Business sites.

How to Turn-Off Sync Icon for OneDrive for Business?

How do you disable the sync button on OneDrive for Business website? Follow these steps to hide the “Sync” button from OneDrive for Business sites:

1. Login to SharePoint Admin center at https://YourDomain-Admin.SharePoint.com
2. Click on the “Settings” link under the left navigation
3. In the settings page, click on “Sync” next to “OneDrive” App.
4. In the Sync page, uncheck “Show the Sync button on the OneDrive website” and click on “Save” button to commit your changes.

It takes a while to hide the sync button from OneDrive for Business library. Keep in mind that disabling sync does not delete any files or folders stored in your OneDrive for Business account – it just stops syncing them with your computer.

Disable Sync in OneDrive for Business using PowerShell

We can disable OneDrive for Business at the tenant level using PowerShell.

Import-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -DisableNameChecking

#Set Parameters
$TenantAdminURL= "https://crescent-admin.sharepoint.com"
 
#Setup Credentials to connect
$Cred = Get-Credential
 
Try {
    #Setup the context
    $Ctx = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($TenantAdminURL)
    $Ctx.Credentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($Cred.UserName,$Cred.Password)
 
    #Get tenant object
    $Tenant= New-Object Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.TenantAdministration.Tenant($Ctx)
    $Ctx.Load($Tenant)
    $Ctx.ExecuteQuery()

    #Disable Sync button for OneDrive 
    $Tenant.HideSyncButtonOnODB = $True
    $Tenant.Update()
    $Ctx.ExecuteQuery()
}
Catch {
    write-host -f Red "Error Updating Tenant Settings!" $_.Exception.Message
}

This hides the sync button for all OneDrive for Business sites, and users won’t be able to access their files unless they log in to the OneDrive site through the web browser. Please note, these changes don’t take effect immediately! It took 6 hours for me in one case!

You can disable the sync feature for a SharePoint Online library or site: How to Disable the “Sync” in a SharePoint Online Document Library?