Placeholders for OneDrive are coming back to Windows 10, but the feature will be called “On-Demand Sync” instead. OneDrive placeholders was the concept to store a small piece of metadata with a thumbnail of a file, instead of downloading the entire file to your computer. This allowed to “sync” gigabytes of data using only a few hundred megabytes. Then when you needed the file a simple double-click on the placeholder would download the rest of it.
The problem was that many users didn’t really understand how the feature worked. This resulted on a lot of users not knowing how to access their files offline. Unfortunately, to prevent further confusion, Microsoft removed the feature in the early days of Windows 10 .
After much requests from numerous feedback, Microsoft has announced during its Ignite technology conference that the feature is returning. However, instead of calling placeholders, the feature will be called On-Demand Sync .
We heard a number of times rumors of placeholders coming back , the company even released a modern app of OneDrive that behaves similar to how placeholders used to work.
Microsoft hasn’t shared any details to when users can expect On-Demand Sync, but presumably the company has plans to roll out the feature with the Windows 10 Redstone 2, which is due in early 2017.
Source Microsoft via Neowin
