How to Fully Disable Windows Sync Center – Stop Mobsync.exe

Title: How to Disable Sync Center (mobsync.exe) on Windows

The Windows Sync Center feature, when enabled, runs in the background to sync and keep a copy of your network files for offline access. While this is good, you might not want Sync Center and its associated process, mobsync.exe, running in the background when not connected to a network location. If that’s what you want, we’ll show you how to disable Sync Center and stop the mobsync.exe process from running in the background. Let’s get started.

Note: The below steps are tested to work on Windows 11 & 10

Remove Sync Partnerships

Before disabling the Sync Center, you must remove any active sync partnerships. That way, you will not see empty drive mappings. Here’s how to do that.

Open the Start menu, search for Control Panel, and click on the top result to open the Control Panel.

In the Control Panel window, click on Sync Center.

Next, click on View Sync Partnerships on the sidebar. Next, select each partnership and click the Delete option. If prompted for confirmation, click the OK button.

Disable Sync Center and Stop mobsync.exe Process

To turn off Sync Center completely, follow these steps.

1. Right-click on the Start menu.
2. Select the Run option.
   
3. Enter control panel in the Run window and click OK.
   
4. In the Control Panel window, set View By to Large Icons.
5. Now, find and click on the Sync Center option.
6. Click on the Manage offline files option in the left pane.
   
7. Click the Disable offline files button.
   
8. Finally, restart your computer.

After restarting your computer, Sync Center is completely disabled and the offline file sync feature is turned off. Also, the mobsync.exe process will no longer run in the background.

To enable it back, follow the same steps but click the ‘Enable offline files’ button in step 7 and restart the system.

Turn Off Sync Center Using Group Policy

If you want to turn off Sync Center for all users, you can use the Group Policy method. Here are the steps:

1. Open the Start menu.
2. Search for Edit group policy and open it.
   
3. Navigate to the Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > Offline Files folder.
4. Find the double-click on the Allow or Disallow use of the Offline Files feature policy.
5. Select the Disabled radio option.
6. Click OK to save changes.
   
7. Close the Group Policy Editor.
8. Restart your computer.

Restarting will apply the policy system-wide and disable the Sync Center on Windows 10 & 11. The beauty of this method is that it enforces the rule and users cannot enable Sync Center via Control Panel.

To turn on the Sync Center via Group Policy, follow the same steps as shown above but select the “Not configured” or “Enabled” radio option in the policy properties window.

Is mobsync.exe a virus?

No, mobsync.exe is NOT a virus. It is related to the Windows Sync Center feature and as long as it is enabled, the mobsync.exe process runs in the background.

And there you have it. It’s that simple to disable Sync Center and stop the mobsync.exe process from running in the background. If you like this article, check out how to fix sync is not available Windows 10 error.