Why LocalSynapse Skips Your OneDrive Files (And How to Fix It)

What's actually on your disk

When you sync a OneDrive or iCloud folder, you'd think every file is downloaded to your computer. It often isn't. Modern cloud sync clients use a technique called Files On-Demand (Microsoft's name) or Optimize Mac Storage (Apple's name). The folder shows you a complete file listing, but most files are actually placeholders:

• Filename ✓
• File size ✓
• Modified date ✓
• Actual content ✗ (lives in the cloud)

The placeholder is just a pointer. When you double-click it, the cloud client downloads the real file on demand. Until then, there's nothing on your disk to search.

Why search tools can't read them

LocalSynapse — like every local search tool — opens files and reads their bytes. When it tries to open a placeholder, the cloud client either downloads the file (slow, expensive, possibly metered) or returns a "FILE_NOT_AVAILABLE_OFFLINE" error. Either is bad: silently downloading thousands of cloud files would take hours and could blow through bandwidth quotas; failing to read them would clutter the index with broken entries.

So LocalSynapse does the right thing: it detects placeholders during scanning and skips them, marking them as "skipped — cloud only" in the Data Setup page. You can see the count and the reason at any time.

This applies to:

• OneDrive with Files On-Demand enabled
• iCloud Drive with Optimize Mac Storage enabled
• Google Drive for Desktop in streaming mode
• Dropbox Smart Sync

How to make cloud files searchable

The fix is the same across all clients: tell the cloud client to keep the actual file content on your disk, not just a placeholder. Once the file is fully downloaded, LocalSynapse will index it on the next scan.

OneDrive (Windows)

1. Open File Explorer and navigate to your OneDrive folder.
2. Select the files or folders you want searchable.
3. Right-click → Always keep on this device.
4. The cloud icon next to the file changes to a green check, meaning it's now fully downloaded.

To do it for everything in OneDrive: right-click the OneDrive cloud icon in the system tray → Settings → Sync and backup → Advanced settings → Free up disk space (turn this off).

iCloud Drive (Mac)

1. Open Finder → iCloud Drive.
2. Right-click the file or folder → Download Now.
3. To stop iCloud from removing local copies later: Apple menu → System Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → iCloud Drive → turn off Optimize Mac Storage.

Google Drive for Desktop

1. Open Google Drive for Desktop preferences.
2. Switch the folder from Stream files to Mirror files.
3. Mirror mode keeps a full local copy of everything in that folder.

Dropbox

Right-click any file in your Dropbox folder → Smart Sync → Local. For an entire folder, do the same on the folder.

Then re-scan

After marking files as locally available, open LocalSynapse → Data Setup → Scan. The scanner will pick up the newly downloaded files and pass them to the indexing pipeline. The Skipped count should drop accordingly.

What if I can't keep everything local?

If your cloud folder is bigger than your disk, you can be selective. Pick the folders you actually search inside — usually project folders, document archives, and current work — and mark just those as "always keep on this device". Keep cold archives in cloud-only mode.

The Skipped count in Data Setup tells you exactly how many files are still cloud-only, so you can decide whether to download more.

The summary

Cloud files aren't really on your disk until you tell the sync client to keep them there. LocalSynapse can only search what's actually on disk — same as Spotlight, Windows Search, Everything's content plugin, and every other local indexer. Once you mark the folders you care about as locally available, they become fully searchable, and the skipped count goes away.

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