OneDrive downloading photos without asking

[kingtigre]

OneDrive has been experiencing a bug for a few weeks now on my Surface Pro 4.

Files-on-Demand is on. Windows is current. I have my photos, desktop, documents all saving to OneDrive by default.

Seemingly at random, OneDrive begins downloading every photo in my photos directory. I cancel it, and it just tries again in a few minutes. I am constantly battling with OneDrive to stop trying to sync these files to my PC. I have selected "Free up space" repetitively to no avail. It just keeps downloading them.

I can't let it do this as i have many GBs of photos saved there. I don't want to block OneDrive...for obvious reasons, but I've resorted to pausing syncing every day I am using the device. Thus defeating the entire purpose of OneDrive.

Anyone have any idea what is going on? Reddit had a single thread on this and it appears their underlying cause was something with Malware Bytes. But I do not use and have never had MWB on my Surface.

 

[kingtigre]

UPDATE: A user on the feedback hub posted a "solution" to the issue as it stands. Here is what seems to be happening.
1.) I have Auto-Save Pictures to OneDrive turned on. This makes the computer's default picture directory your OneDrive/Pictures folder.
2.) Files-On-Demand is turned on
3.) Show my Cloud-Only content in OneDrive selected in the Photos app settings.
4.) The OneDrive/Pictures directory is listed as a folder in the Photos app as well.
5.) People option is on in Photos app too.

This seems to cause the Photos app to scan every image in the added folders to tag people. Thus, all the pictures in the OneDrive/Pictures directory are being individually downloaded and scanned. You can cancel it but the Photos app just starts trying to do its job and scan for people again. Creating an endless loop.

The "fix" was to remove the OneDrive/Pictures folder from the Photos app. Since the Cloud-Only option is still on, the images are still added/viewable in the Photos app. The people feature doesn't seem to force scan those images locally (if at all) so it doesn't download all the OneDrive pictures for scanning.

My pictures are still saved directly to my OneDrive, Still appear in Photos, Don't force download every few minutes anymore.

Edit:

The people feature doesn't seem to force scan those images locally (if at all) so it doesn't download all the OneDrive pictures for scanning.

Nope. Still did it. Started downloading anyway. I've now turned off the People option in the hopes that it is the culprit.