How to Keep Microsoft Edge from Always Popping Up

Best Practices for Using Microsoft OneDrive

There’s more to OneDrive than meets the eye. Here’s how to tap into its best features.

You use OneDrive to save and sync your documents, photos, and other files in the cloud via OneDrive. You may use the basic features of OneDrive. But Microsoft has continually updated and enhanced the service. OneDrive may now offer benefits that you don’t know about or just haven’t set up.

You can use OneDrive to not only save and sync your files online but also share them with other people. You can fetch files from other computers. You can use a Files on-Demand feature to save space on your computer. And you can opt to back up important folders, such as your desktop, documents, and pictures.

For this story, I’m running OneDrive from Windows 10. The service works in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 as well, but it’s more robust and feature-filled in Windows 10. I’ll assume you’ve already set up OneDrive and that you’re using it to at least back up certain folders and files.

View Your OneDrive Files Locally and Online

To easily see your OneDrive folders and files, right-click on the OneDrive icon in your System Tray. Select the option to Open your OneDrive folder or Open folder. Your local OneDrive folders and files pop up in File Explorer.

Go back to the OneDrive icon and select View online. Sign into OneDrive with your Microsoft Account to see your online files.

Why check out your local and online OneDrive files? Perhaps OneDrive isn’t backing up or syncing properly or you’re getting certain errors. You can view your local and online OneDrive windows side-by-side to see if there are any discrepancies between the two.

Pause Syncing

You’ve accidentally deleted or incorrectly modified a document or other file that’s getting backed up to OneDrive. How do you make sure the deletion or the modifications don’t get synced to the same file on your other OneDrive computers or devices?

You can pause the synchronization. Right-click on the OneDrive System Tray icon and click on Pause syncing. You can then choose to pause the syncing for 2 hours, 8 hours, or 24 hours. After you’ve fixed the problem, you can manually resume syncing. Right-click on the OneDrive icon and select Resume syncing.

Fetch Files on Another PC

You can access and view folders and files stored on another PC through OneDrive.

To set this up on your current computer, right-click on the OneDrive icon and select Settings. Click on the Settings tab and check the box for Let me use OneDrive to fetch any of the files on this PC.

From another computer, right-click on the OneDrive icon and select View online. At the OneDrive site, click on the entry for PCs. Click on the PC on which you’ve enabled the Fetch my files option. You can now browse the folders on that PC to view and open files.

Share a File

In Windows 10, you can share OneDrive files online or locally.

First, you may want to be notified whenever someone edits a file you’ve shared. Right-click on the OneDrive icon and select Settings. Click on the Settings tab and check the box to Display notifications when people share with me or edit my shared files. Go back to the OneDrive icon and select View online.

Browse to and select the file you wish to share. Click on the Share icon. Select if you wish to allow editing. Set an expiration date and password if necessary. You can now get a link or send the share link via email.

To share a OneDrive-synced file locally, open File Explorer. Right-click on the file and select Share to share it with someone by email or Share a OneDrive link to generate a share link.

Save Space on Your PC with Files On-Demand

You can save space on your hard drive by opting to save files only on your OneDrive online space and not on your computer.

To do this, right-click on the OneDrive icon, select Settings, and check the box to Save space and download files as you use them. Any files backed up and synced through OneDrive are removed from your computer.

Open File Explorer. Your folders and files will display cloud icons next to them indicating that they’re stored online and not locally. To access such a file, double-click it. The file is then downloaded to your computer as you work with it. To store the file locally, right-click on it and select Always keep on this device.

Automatically Save Photos, Videos, and Screenshots to OneDrive

You can opt to automatically upload photos, videos, and screenshots from your mobile phone whenever you connect it to your OneDrive-enabled computer. Right-click on the OneDrive icon and select Settings. Click on the tab for Auto Save.

To save photos and videos, check the box to Automatically save photos and videos to OneDrive whenever I connect a camera, phone, or other device to my PC. To save screenshots, check the box to Automatically save screenshots I capture to OneDrive.

Get More Storage

If you subscribe to Office 365, a hefty 1 terabyte of OneDrive storage is included in your plan. That should be ample space. But if you’re not an Office 365 subscriber, you get a mere 5GB of space for free.

To check out your storage options, right-click on the OneDrive icon and select View online. Click on the link that shows your current available space. At the Manage Storage screen, click on the Upgrade link. You can upgrade to 50GB of space for $1.99 a month. To do so, click on the link to Buy for $1.99/month.

Back Up and Protect Important Folders

OneDrive now lets you back up and sync specific folders from their default locations, a change from the usual setup where only content stored in the OneDrive folder is backed up and synced. This folder protection feature applies to your desktop, documents, and pictures folders. This feature is just rolling out to OneDrive, so you may not see it just yet. When the feature is available, you’ll receive a prompt to set up folder protection. Click this prompt and follow the steps.

If you miss the prompt, right-click on the OneDrive icon, select Settings, and click the Auto Save tab. If folder protection is accessible, you’ll see a section to Protect your important folders. Click the button to Update folders. By default, Desktop, Pictures, and Documents are included in the back up. Deselect any of the three folders that you want to exclude. Click the button to Start protection.

You can now close the OneDrive window while the folders are being backed up. After the backup completes, you’ll be able to see these folders in your OneDrive online space and on any computers running OneDrive.

How to Keep Microsoft Edge from Always Popping Up

Q.  Microsoft Edge keeps appearing when I select a URL. Any ideas on a fix so that my default browser setting works the way I think it should?

A. This week’s question comes from a reader after they saw last week’s newsletter about Microsoft testing out a pop-up when users install an alternative browser on Windows 10. They shared that this system is running the production release of Windows 10 Home and not participating in Windows Insider early build/app releases.

I have no doubt our reader knows about setting defaults in Windows 10 but for posterity, I am going to go ahead and document that process here to get us started with the discussion about this error.

Note: Your choice of web browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox, must already be installed before you begin this process.

Step 1

Open the Windows Settings app and go to Apps > Default apps.

Step 2

Select Microsoft Edge under Web browser.

Step 3

Select your browser of choice from the list of options.

Step 4

Windows 10 will remind you about Edge here but just go ahead and click on the Select anyway text.

Step 5

Your web browser of choice should not be shown as the default under Web browser.

That is all it usually takes to make your preferred browser the default for Windows 10.

Bonus Option for Setting Default Browser

There is another way to select the default browser for web protocols by setting your browser of choice for that specific protocol.

If you go back to Windows Settings > Apps > Default apps which we used in Step 1 above, just scroll down until you see the text link Choose default apps by protocol.

On this page just scroll down until you find the HTTP & HTTPS protocols and verify they reflect the default browser you selected in the steps above. If for some reason they are not showing here, just click on Microsoft Edge and select your browser from that list as we did above.

Of course, you can always open your browser of choice and go into its settings and designate it as your default from there. That, in turn, should change the settings we have already covered.

Finally, although our reader does not mention specific apps that they are using when Edge opens instead of their browser, there is one bug that might be part of this error.

In the Mail & Calendar app that is shipped with Windows 10, this bug would cause Edge to open for any URL selected in emails. As part of the app release preview program, that bug fix has been shipped to testers. I just verified that the Mail & Calendar app does now honor the default browser choice with that fix in place.

If there are other apps that are still opening Edge, it could be a similar bug in an app or process I am not familiar with at this point. My recommendation is to double check the two areas above that impacts the default browser and select that setting in your preferred browser and see if that resets things.

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter and ping me there for any additional troubleshooting or assistance.