Microsoft has given the web edition of OneDrive a major upgrade, bringing offline mode to the cloud storage service.

Microsoft announced the the change in a blog post. The company says offline mode brings benefits even when connected.

Offline mode uses your device’s local storage to store certain file information such as file name, size, author, last date accessed, etc. This is made possible through the OneDrive Sync app, which intelligently stores a cache of your files’ metadata locally.

One of the primary benefits of this local cache is that it significantly improves load-times for OneDrive in your browser and speeds up viewing and interacting with your OneDrive files in your browser or OneDrive app in Microsoft Teams and Outlook. By accessing your content from your local cache instead of fetching it from a cloud server, data retrieval speeds are significantly improved. The result? A smooth OneDrive experience that’s insulated against slow or intermittent connections.

Furthermore, this enhancement has the added advantage of bypassing cloud service-related throttling issues. This is particularly beneficial when working with extremely large collections of files, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. You get smoother and faster access to large volumes of files without any hindrance.

The new feature is a welcome improvement for OneDrive users.