OneDrive finally catches up to Google Drive and iCloud with an offline mode – here’s how to set it up

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Microsoft OneDrive has finally introduced a feature long considered a staple of Google Drive and iCloud: an offline mode. The mode will be rolled out to students and professionals from today onwards, allowing users to save and edit work whether they have an internet connection or not.

Offline mode for the web version of OneDrive will now let you open your files in the various sections of the program, like your shared folder and meeting views, as well as edit your documents, rename them, and sort them – all without needing an internet connection.

All these changes will be ‘saved’ offline and implemented once you regain internet connectivity with your changes synced to the cloud. Files will be marked as ‘available offline’ as they are in Google Drive.

How to set it up

If you want to use the new offline mode for OneDrive, you’ll need to install the OneDrive app on your Windows or Mac device. Once you’ve done that, you need to head over to OneDrive on your web browser of choice.

You should be prompted to complete the one-time setup for offline mode, and voila! You’re all set! You should bear in mind that there are limitations on what you can and cannot do with offline mode at present. As MSPoweruser reports, offline mode only includes support if you have 250,000 files or fewer – hopefully, you do! – and the feature is currently only supported for OneDrive for work and school (although a wider rollout is presumably in the works).

While long overdue, this is a great chance for Onedrive users who have to work on the go and make last-minute changes to work, and it helps take the stress off those unfortunate times when your Wi-Fi crashes and you worry about losing all your progress! Hopefully, this will tempt more people to try the file management program – now that it’s finally up to speed with basically every other alternative.