Group Policy and MDM settings

Use these Group Policy and mobile device management (MDM) settings only on corporate-owned devices because these policies are applied to the user’s entire device. Applying an MDM policy to disable settings sync for a personal, user-owned device negatively impacts the use of that device. These policies affect other user accounts on the device.

Enterprises that want to manage roaming for personal (unmanaged) devices can use the Microsoft Entra admin center to enable or disable roaming, rather than using Group Policy or MDM. The following tables describe the policy settings available.

Note

This article applies to the Microsoft Edge Legacy HTML-based browser launched with Windows 10 in July 2015. The article does not apply to the new Microsoft Edge Chromium-based browser released on January 15, 2020. For more information on the Sync behavior for the new Microsoft Edge, see the article Microsoft Edge Sync.

MDM settings

The MDM policy settings apply to Windows 10 or newer. Refer to Devices and endpoints for details on what devices are supported for Microsoft Entra ID-based syncing.

Name	Description
Allow Microsoft Account Connection	Allows users to authenticate using a Microsoft account on the device
Allow Sync My Settings	Allows users to roam Windows settings and app data; Disabling this policy disables sync and backups on mobile devices

Group Policy settings

The Group Policy settings apply to Windows 10 or newer devices that are joined to an Active Directory domain. The table also includes legacy settings that would appear to manage sync settings. Legacy settings that don't work for Enterprise State Roaming for Windows 10 or newer are noted with ‘Do not use’ in the description.

These settings are located in Group Policy under: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Sync your settings.

Name	Description
Accounts: Block Microsoft Accounts	This policy setting prevents users from adding new Microsoft accounts on this computer
Do not sync	Prevents users to roam Windows settings and app data
Do not sync personalize	Disables syncing of the Themes group
Do not sync browser settings	Disables syncing of the Internet Explorer group
Do not sync passwords	Disables syncing of Passwords group
Do not sync other Windows settings	Disables syncing of Other Windows settings group
Do not sync desktop personalization	Do not use; has no effect
Do not sync on metered connections	Disables roaming on metered connections, such as cellular 3G
Do not sync apps	Do not use; has no effect
Do not sync app settings	Disables roaming of app data
Do not sync start settings	Do not use; has no effect

Next steps

For an overview, see enterprise State Roaming overview.