How to hide OneDrive from Explorer left pane in Windows 11

You can customize the left pane in File Explorer and hide OneDrive from there. The left area is the navigation pane of File Explorer that lists Quick Access, Drives, This PC, and network icons.

Each time Windows 11 boots, the OneDrive app starts automatically in the background. If you do not use it, you can go to its settings and on the “Options” tab uncheck the “Automatically start OneDrive …” item.

Alternatively, you can disable the autostart of the application in the Task Manager, but this will not remove the program icon from the Explorer navigation pane. Hiding the OneDrive shortcut from the navigation pane requires more drastic measures.

There are no options in Windows 11 that would allow you to do this through the graphical interface. To hide the OneDrive cloud service icon from the Explorer navigation pane, you will need to use the Registry Editor.

Hide OneDrive from File Explorer in Windows 11

1. Run the Registry editor with the regedit command in the Run dialog
2. Go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}.
3. Right-click on the last {018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6} subfolder in the left column and select “Export” from the menu. This will save a backup of your key in case you want to return the OneDrive icon to its place in the future.
4. After that, in the right column, change the value of the DWORD parameter System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree from 1 to 0.
5. After that, go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6} key in the registry editor and export it to a .reg file – again, a backup copy that will allow you to restore the OneDrive icon in the future.
6. Here you need to delete the {018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6} subkey.

   

Everything is done. All that you need now is to close the File Explorer windows or restart the Explorer itself in any way convenient for you.

The OneDrive icon from the File Explorer navigation bar will be hidden.

Author: The MFTNEXT Team

The MSFTNEXT project is a small team of authors who love to engage with the latest technology and gadgets. Being passionate Windows bloggers, we are happy to help others fix their system issues. View all posts by The MFTNEXT Team