Microsoft is bringing OneDrive’s Placeholder feature back to Windows 10

Microsoft told the Ignite 2016 conference that it will bring the Placeholder feature back to Windows 10. The sync feature, which will be renamed to On-Demand Sync, was previously found in Windows 8, but was not available in Windows 10.

Microsoft showed in a demo that a OneDrive folder of more than 9GB took up less than 3MB on the hard drive, MSPowerUser writes. The company has not said when the feature will be available, but it is expected to come with the Redstone 2 update, which is expected early next year.

On-Demand Sync displays files that the user has on OneDrive in the explorer, without actually being stored on the computer’s hard drive. Once a file is opened, it is downloaded from the Internet.

In Windows 8, the feature was already available under the name Placeholders, but Microsoft had removed it from Windows 10. According to the company, it could lead to confusion because the files were not available without an internet connection. Microsoft seems to want to solve that problem by giving the files that are only available online a lighter icon, which has a small sign in the shape of a cloud in the lower left corner.