I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip file. I gave up in the end as nothing in there was particularly important. This is an incredibly annoying default.
I had same exact experience with macOS and iCloud. macOS by default enables offloading Documents to cloud, transparently. Problem is if you try to get those files back to store them offline, it gets very tricky very quickly with ambiguous verbiage and lengthy process that you never actually know status of. I ended up losing some files as a result, which came as a total shock to me. I was already in the process of moving back to Linux (hence downloading of the Documents) and this was final straw.
Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!
I wouldn't use the webui for that. Getting rid of onedrive in favor for a self-hosted nextcloud, I used the native client to download all the files on the machine and then moved them out. This also removed them from onedrive after acknowledging the "A lot of files have been deleted from your onedrive account" warning. Actually deleting the onedrive application was also not as straight-forward as some other users may want you to believe. Even now, I'm not sure it won't just pop-up one day once again.
you mean Microsoft is a menace. Microsoft has been tricking generations of people into using OneDrive. I hope nobody is dumb enough to pay for it and I'd create a ton of fake emails and fill it up with junk.
We've really got to stop calling every bad UI a dark pattern. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." Having worked at MSFT I can tell you there's a LOT more incompetence than malice.
This particular case isn't a dark pattern, but the fact OSes are written under the assumption that users want to create an account for cloud services is.
(Yes, by this definition Google, Microsoft and Apple are all dark patterners.)
Google is no better. My family mostly uses iPhones, and on a big extended family vacation, I suggested we use Google Photos to create a shared album to document the trip. Everyone installed the Google Photos app on their iPhone so they could contribute... which resulted in all of them having their email accounts disabled.
What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Microsoft, Google "shares storage" between email and photos. The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached, at which point it disabled the associated gmail account since it was "out of storage".
Talk about an anti-pattern; I spent a good chunk of time on that trip helping people get their storage back so they could send email again.
I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.
> it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached
How could everyone fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression? Also I've never heard of accounts getting disabled for filling the quota.
FYI I am notoriously bad at taking photos (as is constantly explained to me by family and my partner) and my Phone has 130GiB of Photos and Videos on it as we speak.
Drives me insane that to see my existing Google library and shared albums I must allow Google photos access to my phones photos - at which point it turns auto back on.
It does seem ridiculous that over 20 years ago, gmail was advertised with a real-time allowance ticking away increasing, which started at an incredibly generous 1GB allowance and you could watch it tick up in real time faster than you could fill it with mail.
People designed "gmail-as-storage" apps to take advantage of this.
20 years later and we get a pathetic 15GB for mail, photos and everything else combined.
Apple also by default backs up your apps to the cloud.
But it backs up the WHOLE package / folder / whatever terminology they use, including cached and redownloadable data. So if you have a game that has 10GB of cached data, it WILL upload that. Edge for me was >3GB.
And then they have the following user-hostile 'features':
1. They offer a paltry 5GB. Hasn't changed since inception, but app sizes have ... tripped? I have 2GB of health data now.
2. They don't tell you that you're backing up data that can be retrieved elsewhere.
3. The popup when storage is full shows only 'buy more' or ignore (no link/mention to disable individual app like described above)
4. No way to backup to a NAS
5. No way to backup to a computer automatically. You have to provide you passcode every time.
The Apple backup strategy is purposefully broken. I’m already paying for 50GB of iCloud and it often claims that it cannot backup my iPhone despite having multiple gigabytes free. It turns that that during the backup process it operates on a file level, so if you happen to have a large file it will require both copies of the file to fit within your storage limit before the backup can complete. And guess what, several third party apps I use store all their data in a single multi-gigabyte SQLite database that’s written to every day.
As for cached and downloadable data, I have long ago turned off backups for many apps where the data is stored on a server anyways. Backing up these apps never makes any sense.
From the WinUtil screenshots presented in the article I'm absolutely shocked about all the things that you presumably want to turn off or delete to have a "clean" Windows (to some extent if that's possible at all). It's also ridiculous that you need an external tool to easily disable/remove/uninstall every single thing you don't want .
I haven't used Windows since many many years ago and the few times I sit down to interact with someone else's computer I suffer so much that after a few seconds I simply give up, I can't stand anything about it.
If someone were to use Windows, besides WinUtil, are there a set of recommended open source scripts to clean up all the shit out of a fresh Windows installation?
Just to be aware in case of emergency or extreme need...
From perusing reddit, I see some Windows users tempted to consider Linux, often because of Windows 11. But then, many of them won't move because: it doesn't work just like Windows; there is some Windows application they must have, or maybe they just don't want to learn the alternatives. Or they use word/excel/powerpoint and have to interact with others who do also.
The brainwashing, high tolerance for pain and misery (and expense!), and lock-in makes it close to impossible for ordinary computer users to escape.
Not if you are coming from windows and are not a tech nerd. I don’t want to end up being tech support for some non techie I coerced into Linux. It is nowhere near as seamless as zealots like to believe. Been having this discussion since 1997.
Have you actually tried a modern distro like Linux Mint?
Seriously, you don't even need to touch the terminal, everything is neatly organized in a single control panel (unlike the messy >2 control panels situation of Windows).
You can easily install all the applications you want; even games thanks to Steam and Proton.
It's easy to use, there are no ads, no preinstalled adware, no nagware, everything is fast and clean.
I long ago learned to pay the 2$ a month or whatever the hell to just have 1TB of storage and remember to keep my user account drive small enough where I never hit the amount.
I don't use Windows at home. What happens if you don't have Outlook but your personal local files still fill up OneDrive storage? Do you get error messages that files aren't being backed up? Are you unable to save files?
I'm all for suing MS but you're suggesting suing because of personal ignorance? The forced use of email for setup is probably sue worthy but I'd rather people just stop using MS.
I had a similar issue. I ended my O365 subscription. Outlook kept complaining I had exceeded my free storage, which surprised me because I've never used OneDrive for anything, and my email storage was well under the limit.
I deleted a ton of useless emails anyway, but that didn't fix the problem. Somehow I had more than 25 gigs of space being used on a cloud system I'd never used, tied to an email account which supposedly needed less than 500 Mb of storage.
Eventually after a lot of searching I discovered the magic page that gave me direct access to OneDrive's actual storage - which was not, somehow, the page that gave access to the files.
OneDrive was storing a lot of attachments, and deleting emails and clearing the trash didn't delete them.
Or something like that. Whatever the magic words were, I did eventually find them and fix the problem.
But it took a while, I had to resubscribe for free for a month to make it happen, there was a lot of confusing side information online suggesting I should open a ticket (good luck with that on a consumer account) and generally it Just Didn't Work.
I can imagine people resubscribing for another year just to make it all go away.
This has been my lifelong experience of Microsoft - shockingly poor, contemptuous, or downright stupid interface design, Kafka-esque indifference to the user experience, and constant unwanted friction and complication, around a suite of core consumer products that are mediocre to start with.
> Microsoft is actively hostile towards its users.
No shit.
And I see some of the same pattern with Apple now, for instance by default files on iOS get downloaded to the iCloud. And phone get backed up too, same as photos. It just happens that the free 5gb of iCloud storage is slightly not enough for all this shit, and you quickly get a pop up showing you that you must purchase an iCloud subscription.
I know that work because my mother almost fall for it.
Anytime any device in any context greets you with "Hello" or "Welcome", it is announcing that it doesn't belong to you, and that you must be vigilant to its exploitation of you.
Windows is remarkable in that it is constantly editing itself, revising terms of service without notice, nudging, cajoling, and end-running you and at every turn.
Update cannot be stopped, yet updater messages make it seem like you are initiating work and responsible for its successful completion:
"You're 90% there...",
"Don't turn off your PC",
"Something didn't go as planned, don't worry your data is safe",
which is eternally followed by "Welcome" lets arrange a few things...
Apple's dark patterns are far lower key as they supply the total stack, it's feels more custodial.
Linux if it says anything-- which it usually doesn't say much-- will say these changes are well-known to wreck things but you're at our mercy, them your system is put into some polluted state associated with a bygone era and all your config and data is your problem hope you're skilled at IT.
This is part of a broader, financialization-related push across the entire economy to convert one-time-purchase revenue into steady, predictable, ratchet-able recurring revenue.
As an added bonus for them, they can sell laptops with less storage (= fewer chips in this tight market) with the expectation that the customer will store everything in the cloud, with plenty of overage fees.
Email scammers often make their initial emails intentionally full of red flags to automatically filter out anyone smart enough to avoid the scam, and leave them with a pool of people willing to accept any amount of scummyness and abuse.
Windows is the exact same thing but for operating systems. If you're still using it in 2026, it's because you want to be a mark.
Or they go to work and are provided "a computer" and have very little say (or ability to change) what it's running, even if they had the impetus, know-how and knowledge that other things even exist.. you're always running the risk that things will break for you.
This is the moat Windows has. Not Games like people think, that's a stronghold for sure, but Gamers are inconsequential when compared to the amount of business computers and consumer systems people buy.
Chromebooks were the answer for most consumers, but damn, that business moat is basically damn-near unkillable, especially in Scandinavia. (I'm currently subject to it myself).
For real, the tools at my workplace either all work on linux already, or we just do most of our work on AWS linux VMs over VNC anyways, but our laptops are all windows. I'd rather have debian or fedora or whatever on my laptop but IT doesn't care, and they already have everything set up on windows. My laptop doesn't even matter, it basically only needs access to a web browser and it would be fine.
The gaming moat is ever shrinking, at this point it's really only for games that explicitly choose not to support linux (very few in number), or have decided that kernel based anti cheat is the ONLY one worth using (few in number but some can be quite popular). Single player games have been working great for me for many years now, but I don't play stuff like apex legends, league, valorant etc.
Cloud Storage being enabled by default is not abuse, and the vibecoded slop from a YouTuber that is unwisely recommended in that blog post makes a bunch of negative changes to Windows installs, including disabling specific security policies.
If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it. That's available in all regions, for all users.
If you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery, forcibly enable Digital Markets Act mode. This is done by copying/pasting powershell.exe into the same folder it normally is (to bypass the User Choice Protection Driver), running it as admin and punching in:
Open Control Panel and you can uninstall edge. Bing will show up as a thing you can uninstall in Settings - Apps. Non-Microsoft Inbox apps will not download, Copilot will not download, etc. Ads will not show up. The user selected default browser will be respected. Laws: they work!
Enabling DMA mode is massively safer than running some YouTuber's slop script.
The issue is that Microsoft is moving users files to its cloud with out explaining to people CLEARLY what is happening. And getting their customers agreement. And this deception, in MY OPINION is obviously by design , meant to grow their cloud storage revenue thru upgrade offers
If Microsoft was doing it properly, it would be CLEARLY explained to customer what was to happen and getting their agreement. to store files in cloud.
Having used computers , since late 70s, Microsoft has a very long history of dodgy actions for their own benefit and at detriment to customer
I dont know if it works like macOS since I dont use macOS - but it's not a simple copy-to-cloud. It actively replaces file handling in those folders, which breaks a bunch of applications like games that save stuff in Documents/My Games..
Is the "Desktop & Documents Folders" sync option in iCloud on by default? I've never used that feature, and it's a bit buried so it's hard to enable accidentally, but I haven't set up a new Mac from scratch in a long time so I don't know if it is a trap for new users the way OneDrive is.
It isn’t until you explicitly log in to your appleID and choose to do it during setup. It is very clearly laid out. Onedrive bills itself as essential to windows’s functionality.
Somewhat related but I was talking about the OneDrive thing yesterday with a few non-tech friends and it has backfired so many times it's insane. OneDrive seems to take over the folder handling in windows for some reason, instead of just copying the data to the cloud. Any game you play puts stuff in My Games under Documents and you just installed windows? Yep, its gonna sync your entire FFXIV patch files into the cloud, that's 180gb of patches as the launcher downloads the game. tmodloader? Yep and then it's going to fail to launch the game. Skyrim and Starfield save data? Yep. Literally had to help someone troubleshoot that yesterday and the fix is just to uninstall OneDrive so the folder becomes a normal folder again. Had the ffxiv issue myself and the funniest part was getting a notification from microsoft to update my storage plan because it was full... I dont think people would be so much annoyed by OneDrive if it worked like other sync apps that just.. copied your file to the cloud. And maybe if it wasn't an annoying pop-up when you installed windows and didn't set it up (if we logged in, just set it up automatically and dont bother the user), etc..
Your ad hominem attacks aside, The point the author is trying to make is that Microsoft is actively using dark patterns in an operating system to get them to buy things.
If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!"
PowerShell and most CLIs are terrifying to non-technical people. Literally Here Be Dragons. The layperson might be skeptical of a YouTuber telling them to run a dodgy script, but in the age of "delete system32" people sure as hell aren't going to run a command as admin that a user on a random forum recommends they run.
Stuff like this is why I have moved all of my systems except my gaming PC to Linux.
RE "....If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!"....."
The implication here is, OneDrive is backup . It is NOT. Moe Microsoft dodgyness ....
Yes it is. You start your brand new computer and put files into it only to find out all that is stored on their Cloud without your consent. That's literal digital theft and fraud.
>Cloud Storage being enabled by default is not abuse,
I disagree, taking my data without explicit permission is stealing and abuse.
>If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it
I heard if you do that, it gets reinstalled. Is that true ?
> you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery
Per people I know. using Firefox you will be constantly nagged to use Edge. I never used Windows so I do not know if that is true.
Taking my data sounds to me Microsoft is abusive. I liked M/S in the early DOS Days, but left when they started doing border line illegal things to grab market share. I say people using Windows should move elsewhere too.
You’d be terrible at IT support lol but jokes aside, the other part of the issue is by the time “the average user” would determine they don’t want it their data is so intertwined with it they struggle to figure out what is “on the cloud” and what is “local,” as well as what is at risk of being lost.
[Older family member] has gdrive AND onedrive running, she has no clue which is which and is terrified of removing either for fear of losing years of stuff. I have tried to break it down for her but she doesn’t know all her passwords, doesn’t know what is a duplicate, etc.
For me to fix this it would take days easily. Because for years onedrive was humming along and demanding more money to store more. I take a few cracks at it every year and make it better, but we’re so far from solved because it’s just so damn messy by design. And because I don’t know what matters and doesn’t, what is on which service, what she has backed up on random HDD’s, I can’t just start purging things. All of that is complicated enough without onedrive mucking it up further and constantly trying to scare her into buying more space. Transferring to a new computer is always a whole thing.
1: https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind...
2: https://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/microsoft-tries-to-...
3: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/windows-system-components-defaul...
(Yes, by this definition Google, Microsoft and Apple are all dark patterners.)
What happened? Google Photos on the iPhone backs up all your photos by default, and, like Microsoft, Google "shares storage" between email and photos. The minute Google Photos was installed, it started backing up photos until the paltry free tier was reached, at which point it disabled the associated gmail account since it was "out of storage".
Talk about an anti-pattern; I spent a good chunk of time on that trip helping people get their storage back so they could send email again.
I'll never recommend Google Photos to anyone ever again.
How could everyone fill their 15 GiB quota when IIRC by default it only backups the camera roll with lossy compression? Also I've never heard of accounts getting disabled for filling the quota.
HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was last increased (in 2012-ish?).
People designed "gmail-as-storage" apps to take advantage of this.
20 years later and we get a pathetic 15GB for mail, photos and everything else combined.
But it backs up the WHOLE package / folder / whatever terminology they use, including cached and redownloadable data. So if you have a game that has 10GB of cached data, it WILL upload that. Edge for me was >3GB.
And then they have the following user-hostile 'features':
As for cached and downloadable data, I have long ago turned off backups for many apps where the data is stored on a server anyways. Backing up these apps never makes any sense.
I haven't used Windows since many many years ago and the few times I sit down to interact with someone else's computer I suffer so much that after a few seconds I simply give up, I can't stand anything about it.
If someone were to use Windows, besides WinUtil, are there a set of recommended open source scripts to clean up all the shit out of a fresh Windows installation?
Just to be aware in case of emergency or extreme need...
The brainwashing, high tolerance for pain and misery (and expense!), and lock-in makes it close to impossible for ordinary computer users to escape.
Or opposite of the house, the arrogance and presumption.
Given all the nagware present in Windows 11, I'd even say Linux Mint is easier than Windows.
The most difficult part is probably the installation itself.
Seriously, you don't even need to touch the terminal, everything is neatly organized in a single control panel (unlike the messy >2 control panels situation of Windows).
You can easily install all the applications you want; even games thanks to Steam and Proton.
It's easy to use, there are no ads, no preinstalled adware, no nagware, everything is fast and clean.
Perhaps not. But it's still more seamless than Windows these days. Microsoft keeps lowering the bar.
If they're on Office 365, they could be on Linux.
Yes, because companies design products with dark patterns to ensnare users, it's not uncommon for people to win these kind of lawsuit.
> I'd rather people just stop using MS.
Ah yes, just like we're all going to stop using Apple and Google too. How about we have organizations that have teeth and protect the consumer
I deleted a ton of useless emails anyway, but that didn't fix the problem. Somehow I had more than 25 gigs of space being used on a cloud system I'd never used, tied to an email account which supposedly needed less than 500 Mb of storage.
Eventually after a lot of searching I discovered the magic page that gave me direct access to OneDrive's actual storage - which was not, somehow, the page that gave access to the files.
OneDrive was storing a lot of attachments, and deleting emails and clearing the trash didn't delete them.
Or something like that. Whatever the magic words were, I did eventually find them and fix the problem.
But it took a while, I had to resubscribe for free for a month to make it happen, there was a lot of confusing side information online suggesting I should open a ticket (good luck with that on a consumer account) and generally it Just Didn't Work.
I can imagine people resubscribing for another year just to make it all go away.
This has been my lifelong experience of Microsoft - shockingly poor, contemptuous, or downright stupid interface design, Kafka-esque indifference to the user experience, and constant unwanted friction and complication, around a suite of core consumer products that are mediocre to start with.
No shit.
And I see some of the same pattern with Apple now, for instance by default files on iOS get downloaded to the iCloud. And phone get backed up too, same as photos. It just happens that the free 5gb of iCloud storage is slightly not enough for all this shit, and you quickly get a pop up showing you that you must purchase an iCloud subscription.
I know that work because my mother almost fall for it.
Windows is remarkable in that it is constantly editing itself, revising terms of service without notice, nudging, cajoling, and end-running you and at every turn.
Update cannot be stopped, yet updater messages make it seem like you are initiating work and responsible for its successful completion:
"You're 90% there...",
"Don't turn off your PC",
"Something didn't go as planned, don't worry your data is safe",
which is eternally followed by "Welcome" lets arrange a few things...
Apple's dark patterns are far lower key as they supply the total stack, it's feels more custodial.
Linux if it says anything-- which it usually doesn't say much-- will say these changes are well-known to wreck things but you're at our mercy, them your system is put into some polluted state associated with a bygone era and all your config and data is your problem hope you're skilled at IT.
As an added bonus for them, they can sell laptops with less storage (= fewer chips in this tight market) with the expectation that the customer will store everything in the cloud, with plenty of overage fees.
Windows is the exact same thing but for operating systems. If you're still using it in 2026, it's because you want to be a mark.
They buy "a laptop" and it has an OS on it.
Or they go to work and are provided "a computer" and have very little say (or ability to change) what it's running, even if they had the impetus, know-how and knowledge that other things even exist.. you're always running the risk that things will break for you.
This is the moat Windows has. Not Games like people think, that's a stronghold for sure, but Gamers are inconsequential when compared to the amount of business computers and consumer systems people buy.
Chromebooks were the answer for most consumers, but damn, that business moat is basically damn-near unkillable, especially in Scandinavia. (I'm currently subject to it myself).
The gaming moat is ever shrinking, at this point it's really only for games that explicitly choose not to support linux (very few in number), or have decided that kernel based anti cheat is the ONLY one worth using (few in number but some can be quite popular). Single player games have been working great for me for many years now, but I don't play stuff like apex legends, league, valorant etc.
Can we stop a bit this all evil Microsoft fault?
And the author have a solution. Yeah those headline are buzzing.
If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it. That's available in all regions, for all users.
If you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery, forcibly enable Digital Markets Act mode. This is done by copying/pasting powershell.exe into the same folder it normally is (to bypass the User Choice Protection Driver), running it as admin and punching in:
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\DeviceRegion" -Name "DeviceRegion" -Value 0x0000044
Open Control Panel and you can uninstall edge. Bing will show up as a thing you can uninstall in Settings - Apps. Non-Microsoft Inbox apps will not download, Copilot will not download, etc. Ads will not show up. The user selected default browser will be respected. Laws: they work!
Enabling DMA mode is massively safer than running some YouTuber's slop script.
The issue is that Microsoft is moving users files to its cloud with out explaining to people CLEARLY what is happening. And getting their customers agreement. And this deception, in MY OPINION is obviously by design , meant to grow their cloud storage revenue thru upgrade offers
If Microsoft was doing it properly, it would be CLEARLY explained to customer what was to happen and getting their agreement. to store files in cloud.
Having used computers , since late 70s, Microsoft has a very long history of dodgy actions for their own benefit and at detriment to customer
The way that OneDrive works is that it uploads stuff to OneDrive, using your Microsoft 365 storage quota.
If you simply disable OneDrive without correctly uninstalling, the system will blast notifications at you with an ominous warning "You could lose data your system isn't backed up!"
PowerShell and most CLIs are terrifying to non-technical people. Literally Here Be Dragons. The layperson might be skeptical of a YouTuber telling them to run a dodgy script, but in the age of "delete system32" people sure as hell aren't going to run a command as admin that a user on a random forum recommends they run.
Stuff like this is why I have moved all of my systems except my gaming PC to Linux.
Edit: no seriously look at this notification https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/f5907... Grandma absolutely does not understand what that means, She just knows she doesn't want to lose photos of her grandchildren.
The implication here is, OneDrive is backup . It is NOT. Moe Microsoft dodgyness ....
I disagree, taking my data without explicit permission is stealing and abuse.
>If you don't want OneDrive, uninstall it
I heard if you do that, it gets reinstalled. Is that true ?
> you are seeking to be able to uninstall Edge without hackery
Per people I know. using Firefox you will be constantly nagged to use Edge. I never used Windows so I do not know if that is true.
Taking my data sounds to me Microsoft is abusive. I liked M/S in the early DOS Days, but left when they started doing border line illegal things to grab market share. I say people using Windows should move elsewhere too.
Go tell all our parents to navigate that process. Microsoft is very insistent on their using onedrive.
[Older family member] has gdrive AND onedrive running, she has no clue which is which and is terrified of removing either for fear of losing years of stuff. I have tried to break it down for her but she doesn’t know all her passwords, doesn’t know what is a duplicate, etc.
For me to fix this it would take days easily. Because for years onedrive was humming along and demanding more money to store more. I take a few cracks at it every year and make it better, but we’re so far from solved because it’s just so damn messy by design. And because I don’t know what matters and doesn’t, what is on which service, what she has backed up on random HDD’s, I can’t just start purging things. All of that is complicated enough without onedrive mucking it up further and constantly trying to scare her into buying more space. Transferring to a new computer is always a whole thing.