Support for accessing Microsoft OneDrive files through Nautilus is planned for GNOME 46, which is due for release next month.
GVfs (GNOME virtual filesystem) provides a number of backends that allow SFTP, SMB, HTTP, MTP, WebDAV and other mounts/shares to be accessed through the Nautilus file manager (i.e. as folders and files you can open, move, edit, etc).
That tech already offers a Google Drive backend (which is setup via the Settings > Online Accounts panel).
On the way is OneDrive support, thanks to a revived effort utilising the MS Graph API library (and a related task to add the relevant permissions to GNOME Online Accounts).
While there are plenty of ways to use OneDrive in Ubuntu, ranging from standalone GUI clients to background sync scripts, most are community-based efforts that you have to go out and download, install, and configure yourself.
So making OneDrive access in Nautilus a native feature users can enable from Online Accounts, there’s less friction and (potentially) less risk. While this effort will give users access to OneDrive it won’t support offline sync or any other service-specific features.
Of course, there are no guarantees this feature will be part of the final GNOME 46 release in mid March. At the time of writing this this is all just code in commits and merge proposals so there’s no even something I can try in a nightly build.
But there is a good chance it will make it in.
A spurt of activity on the commit has taken place in the last few weeks, along with testing, and feedback/revisions from both GNOME developers and designers, the latter planning on how best to denote OneDrive accounts in the Nautilus sidebar.
If you use OneDrive, be it for your personal files or as part of your work or studies, keep an eye out for this as we get closer to the GNOME 46 beta — which is roughly when GNOME 46 will begin to land in Ubuntu 24.04 daily builds.
