Storytime
I was looking to make use of OneDrive myself the other day and noticed I didn’t have the app installed so I wandered over to the Xbox App Store and searched for ‘OneDrive’ and was presented with everything but OneDrive
So I turned to the iPad and started my research to find out where I had gone wrong and why I couldn’t find the OneDrive app I had used for so long with my original Xbox One...
As it turns out I’m not alone in struggling to find the app and while I have no information to cite from trustworthy sources I think I have a fairly good idea of what’s going on.
Xbox removes the file manager.
Back in 2019 Windows Central reported that Microsoft intended to remove the file manager from the Xbox due to lack of use, a dubious claim at the time but as is the case with companies these days they set a goal and regardless of objections did what they want.
While Microsoft made the "lack of usage" case others suggested this was to stop people checking or modding the Xbox, at least make it far more difficult for people to access the Xbox file system in any meaningful way.
OneDrive is an app that still provided some level of file manager and possibly even depended upon it and while the OneDrive app wasn’t the best it was good for getting videos and screenshots off the Xbox…
What now?
So what now? Well Dropbox apparently does have an app, you could periodically unplug your recording drive and plug it into a system …bit of a choice but no big deal… or you could just continue to use OneDrive
So while the app is gone and dead, it seems that Microsoft wanted to keep the functionality in place and it does work with videos and screenshots on an external drive.
How to OneDrive
If you head into the captures section, then go to all captures
Then go to wherever you set your default capture location - if you never set this up, it's on the console, in my case go to an external drive
From here use the multi-select box in the top right
choose the items I want to upload to OneDrive… or all of them then click upload to OneDrive.
You can track the upload progress in uploads, it’s in the same drop-down where you select the external drive. This is true of Xbox network uploaded clips also, it does show where a clip is going in terms of Xbox network vs OneDrive.
Some things to note.
Oddly when you initially click upload to OneDrive with multiple items it will go through them and say ‘complete’, this complete only confirms they have been added to the upload queue.
It’s not intuitive and you need to track what you already uploaded or risk duplication and finally, it’s quite slow
TLDR
Xbox apparently does not want any form of file management on the Xbox at all or at least they won't support any form of file management. OneDrive has been moved into a background system of Xbox which you can push captures too but not much more.
Logging into your Xbox so far as I'm aware automatically logs into OneDrive - both being Microsoft based logins, this makes some sense.