This sharing can be made less obvious by adding SkyDrive Documents to local Documents folders or image files from SkyDrive Pictures to the local Pictures folder.

The SkyDrive application can also be used for remote access to a PC. Users log in to SkyDrive.com, perform a second authentication and gain access to the remote machine. The second authentication factor can be sent either to an alternate email address or to a mobile phone that must be in the user's possession.

The client is available for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 as well as Windows phones and iPhones, but not . A new app for iPads is also available.

SkyDrive comes with 7GB of free storage, and more can be bought at annual rates of $10 for 20GB, $25 for 50GB and $50 for 100GB, which compares well to Dropbox where 50GB costs $120 per year.

The new version of SkyDrive supports managing the service from Finder on Mac OS X devices, so any application that uses the file system can access SkyDrive as well.