{"id":45672,"date":"2024-02-27T09:48:32","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T09:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/?p=45672"},"modified":"2025-10-21T08:28:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:28:38","slug":"install-onedrive-ubuntu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/2024\/02\/install-onedrive-ubuntu\/","title":{"rendered":"Install & Setup OneDrive Client in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is a step by step beginners guide shows how to install and setup OneDrive client in Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04 to sync files between local machine and Microsoft cloud.<\/p>\n

OneDrive is a file hosting service by Microsoft. It so far does not have an official app for Linux, but there’s a popular free open-source client works in most Linux. And, here’s the basic how to guide for installing and using it in Ubuntu Linux.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Method 1: Ubuntu 24.04 & Higher with default GNOME Desktop only<\/h3>\n

GNOME since 46 introduced onedrive support in its Online Accounts integration. Meaning, Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 40 Workstation, and other other Linux with the latest GNOME can follow the steps below to get OneDrive integration in file manager.<\/p>\n

1. First, press Super<\/b> (Window Logo) + S<\/b> to open top-right system tray menu (aka Quick Settings), then click open “Settings<\/b>” utility.<\/p>\n

2. When it opens, navigate to Online Accounts<\/b> in the left, then click MicroSoft 365<\/b> in right. In will open up a web page, and ask to login and grant permissions\u00a0 to access your onedrive files.<\/p>\n

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3. After successfully login your account, you’ll see it listed in the settings page. By clicking on it will pop-up the dialog, with option to toggle on\/off onedrive access, and button to remove the Microsoft 365 account at anytime as you want.<\/p>\n

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And, you can re-open “Files”, aka Nautilus file manager, and click you account name in left panel to access OneDrive files.<\/p>\n

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Method 2: for Ubuntu 22.04\/24.04 with any desktop environments:<\/h3>\n

For choice, there’s a free open-source OneDrive client<\/a> that works in most Linux desktop environment.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Install OneDrive Client:<\/h4>\n

Option 1: Install it from system repository<\/b>
\nThe client package is available in most Linux repositories, including Ubuntu.<\/p>\n

For Ubuntu users, simply press Ctrl+Alt+T<\/code> on keyboard to open terminal. and run command to install it:<\/p>\n

sudo apt install onedrive<\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nOption 2: Install from third-party repository<\/b>
\nOneDrive package in repository is old. If you would like to get the latest version, then here’s a third-party repository available.<\/p>\n
1. First, click the link below to go to the OBS repository:<\/p>\n
\n
OneDrive 3rd-party OBS Repository<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
2. In that web page, click on Ubuntu logo, select “Grab binary package directly<\/i>“, then click download the .deb<\/code> package for your system. So far, it offers onedrive package for Ubuntu from 20.04 to 25.04.<\/p>\n
In case you don’t know which Ubuntu version is currently running, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run cat \/etc\/os-release<\/code>, and run\u00a0 dpkg --print-architecture<\/code> commands to tell OS type (amd64, arm64 or armhf).<\/p>\n
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3. Finally, right-click on your Downloads folder and click “Open in Terminal<\/b>“, and run command in pop-up terminal to install the .deb<\/code> package.<\/p>\n
sudo apt install .\/onedrive*.deb<\/pre>\n
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Step 2: Authorize with your OneDrive Account<\/h4>\n
UPDATE: For those who hate Linux commands, there’s now a graphical tool to do the following steps! SKIP Step 2 – 5, and scroll down to see the GUI method.<\/b><\/p>\n
Before being able to upload or download files, you have to first authorize the app with your OneDrive account.<\/p>\n
1. To do so, simply open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:<\/p>\n
onedrive<\/pre>\n
Then, copy the output link url and open in web browser.<\/p>\n
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2. In the web page, click “Accept” button to grant permissions to access your OneDrive account.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
3. After that, the web page will be redirect to a blank page. Just copy the url of that blank page, and paste back into the terminal window and hit Enter.<\/b><\/p>\n
If done successfully, the terminal will output somethings says ‘Application has been successfully authorized<\/code>‘.<\/p>\n
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Step 3: Sync files between local folder and OneDrive cloud.<\/h4>\n
After authorized the app, you can now try running the client in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) by running command:<\/p>\n
onedrive --dry-run --sync<\/pre>\n
This command will run the client to test the configuration. No files will be downloaded, uploaded or removed! A OneDrive<\/b> folder will be created (if not exist) in your user home directory for syncing files.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
To start syncing files, run command:<\/p>\n
onedrive --sync<\/pre>\n
Or use onedrive --sync --local-first<\/code> to upload local files (from user’s OneDrive folder) first then download from cloud.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
For choice, you may sync only single folder only, for example “Pictures<\/code>” sub-folder under OneDrive directory, by running command:<\/p>\n
onedrive --sync --single-directory 'Pictures'<\/pre>\n
Or, do uploading local files only via command:<\/p>\n
onedrive --sync --upload-only<\/pre>\n
There’s also --download-only<\/code> command option to only download differences from cloud to local, and --no-remote-delete<\/code> to NOT remove files that previously synced but later manually deleted.<\/p>\n
Step 4: Sync files automatically<\/h4>\n
If everything goes OK, you may also start OneDrive as systemd service, so it does the file sync between cloud and local folder automatically.<\/p>\n
To do so, simply run command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to enable the service:<\/p>\n
systemctl enable --user onedrive<\/pre>\n
Then, start it by running command:<\/p>\n
systemctl start --user onedrive<\/pre>\n
Finally, check the service status by running command systemctl status --user onedrive<\/code>.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Once the service is in active running status, try making difference in either local or cloud OneDrive folder, then check in another side to see if it works.<\/p>\n
Step 5: Config OneDrive client<\/h4>\n
If the default sync options do not meet your need, then, run command to copy example config file to local folder:<\/p>\n
sudo cp \/usr\/share\/doc\/onedrive\/config ~\/.config\/onedrive\/<\/pre>\n
Then, change the ownership from root to your user:<\/p>\n
sudo chown $USER:$USER ~\/.config\/onedrive\/config<\/pre>\n
Finally, either open file manager (press Ctrl+H<\/code> to view hidden files\/folders), navigate, and click edit the file. Or, run command:<\/p>\n
gnome-text-editor ~\/.config\/onedrive\/config<\/pre>\n
For Ubuntu 22.04 and earlier, replace gnome-text-editor<\/code> with gedit. For non-GNOME Desktop, replace it with your text editor, or use nano<\/code> command line editor works in most desktops.<\/i><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
When file opens, un-comment (remove #<\/b> at the beginning) to enable any option and change its value as you want, such as sync folder<\/code>, exclude files\/folders<\/code>, upload only<\/code> or download only<\/code>, and more, and finally save the file.<\/p>\n
Finally, run command systemctl restart --user onedrive<\/code> to restart service to apply the changes. For more about how to use OneDrive client, see the official docs<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Use GUI tool to configure the OneDrive client<\/h4>\n
To make things easy, you may select download the GUI tool after installed the OneDrive client:<\/p>\n
\n
Download OneDriveGUI<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It’s an AppImage that works in most Linux, though Ubuntu user needs to first enable AppImage support by installing libfuse2<\/code> package via the command below:<\/p>\n
sudo apt install libfuse2<\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
After downloaded the AppImage, add executable permission from its Properties dialog, and click Run to start it.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
Then, follow the pop-up wizard to add your OneDrive profile.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
Finally, click “Start Sync” icon to start, and follow the pop-up dialog to login your account.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
Uninstall OneDrive:<\/h3>\n
If you don’t to use the client anymore, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to stop and disable the service:<\/p>\n
systemctl disable --now --user onedrive<\/pre>\n
Then, remove the client package by running command:<\/p>\n
sudo apt remove --autoremove onedrive<\/pre>\n
For choice, you may clear the leftovers by deleting them via commands:<\/p>\n
sudo rm \/etc\/logrotate.d\/onedrive<\/pre>\n
rm -R ~\/.config\/onedrive<\/pre>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a step by step beginners guide shows how to install and setup OneDrive client in Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04 to sync files between local machine and Microsoft cloud. OneDrive is a file hosting service by Microsoft. It so far does not have an official app for Linux, but there’s a popular free […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[681,1108],"class_list":["post-45672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-howtos","tag-cloud-file-sync","tag-onedrive"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}