You can now sync your PC's important folders with OneDrive

Come for the convenience, stay for the protection!

Matt Elliott Senior Editor

Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.

Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms

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Matt Elliott

Aug. 23, 2018 5:00 a.m. PT

Apple has let you sync folders on your Mac with iCloud Drive for nearly two years, and now Microsoft is adding such convenience and protection via its OneDrive cloud service. With Windows 10 , you can now automatically sync your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders with OneDrive, which not only makes the contents of said folders easily accessible from any Internet-connected device but also adds a layer of protection should your PC go belly-up. This folder syncing is available for all personal, work and school OneDrive accounts.

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Set up OneDrive folder sync

To start syncing folders with OneDrive, you need to get into settings for OneDrive. There are two ways to do this:

1. Click the OneDrive clouds icon in the system tray, click More and then click Settings.

2. If you're using OneDrive's Files On-Demand feature, then you can open File Explorer, right-click OneDrive and choose Settings.

With the OneDrive settings window open, click the Auto Save tab and then click the Update folders button. This opens another window that shows you that your Desktop, Pictures and Documents folder are being synced. You can click Stop protecting to stop syncing any of the three.