Get rid of Windows 11 File Explorer’s “Start Backup” advertisement

The latest version of Windows started to aggressively advertise OneDrive’s backup feature in File Explorer, where it would prominently show a “Start backup” button as part of the navigation bar:

Clicking on this button, even accidentally, will trigger an annoying dialog, that, with it’s preselected options, might start a backup of data to Microsoft’s cloud that you did not really intend:

This notification can be turned off by a hidden setting inside File Explorer’s settings. Open Explorer’s settings and from there select the “View” tab, find the “Show sync provider notifications” setting and un-check it.

After logging out and logging in again, the notification is gone. To be honest, I don’t know which other notifications I am now missing, but so far I have not noticed anything important.

One thought on “Get rid of Windows 11 File Explorer’s “Start Backup” advertisement”

  1. Darn Microsoft, this method no longer works. Microsoft really wants you to “Start backup”. The thing that irks me the most is that it isn’t a “backup”, it’s actually moving your files to OneDrive.

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