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I recently posed this comment in Feedback Hub, and I thought I would bring it up here as well. For the past week or so, I have had a persistent notification in Action Center that Runtime Broker is downloading pictures to my PC. Every time, I have clicked "cancel download", and it automatically resumes. Every time, I have gone into the OneDrive folder where the pictures are being downloaded and clicked "free up space", and it automatically resumes. I have hundreds of GBs of pictures intentionally left in the cloud and it seems that Runtime Broker wants them on my PC.
This is detrimental to productivity as I have no idea if storage space will be full when I need to save something. I cannot close OneDrive or pause syncing because I need to use OneDrive files for my job. This is a serious issue, in my opinion, and numerous people have been having this problem as I have seen from their other forum posts, but there is no real solution.
@Gibson Porter IV
Does this issue go away?
Welcome to post any updates.
Well this is embarrassing, I might have figured something out right after I posted this question. After I saw that running notification in Action Center that Runtime Broker had downloaded 12.7 GB in this go-round, I repeatedly clicked "cancel download" and was eventually given an option to block Runtime Broker from downloading files. Hopefully this is a permanent solution; if it occurs again, I will comment a response.
Thanks for your sharing.
If this issue does not go away, I suggest you presss Win+I > Privacy > Scroll down to find Background apps > Turn off for Microsoft Photos.
In addition to Microsoft Photos, which comes with the system, are there other Picture editors installed on your computer?
If yes, you may presss Win+I > Apps > Startup > Switch off these Picture editors.
Here is a similar thread, "Why does Runtime Broker download all my always online files from OneDrive?", on the second page, BrianErickson-9266 shared a solution, you may also have a look.
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