what exactly is happening during automatic file downloads

Question

When icloud, dropbox, onedrive, etc. sync files to/from the cloud, are they using microsofts automatic file downloads feature? If so, is there an underlying windows api that I can use to control this functionality?

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, each of the cloud storage providers uses its own API. In Windows, you install some software that uses the corresponding API to perform the file downloads. So the functionality is not built into Windows, but rather depends on custom software from each provider.

In the case of OneDrive, you can find the API documented here.

Answer 2

Hi @Allen ,
Just checking in to see if the information of APoblacion was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

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Answer 3

This gave part of the answer (the graph api) but still doesn't get to what is actually 'happening' which was the gist of my question. I was able to do deeper digging and found a lot of information on the placeholder file types and such. Interestingly, the icloud software uses the same onedrive / graph api that onedrive. I'm trying to trace what is happening on a cloud file from the time it appears to hydration which is still a mystery.