diff --git a/fs/xfs/xfs_icache.c b/fs/xfs/xfs_icache.c
index 86ce5709b8e3..63304154006d 100644
--- a/fs/xfs/xfs_icache.c
+++ b/fs/xfs/xfs_icache.c
@@ -1234,14 +1234,17 @@ xfs_inode_clear_eofblocks_tag(
 }
 
 /*
- * Set ourselves up to free CoW blocks from this file.  If it's already clean
- * then we can bail out quickly, but otherwise we must back off if the file
- * is undergoing some kind of write.
+ * Prepare to free COW fork blocks from an inode.
  */
 static bool
 xfs_prep_free_cowblocks(
-	struct xfs_inode	*ip)
+	struct xfs_inode	*ip,
+	struct xfs_icwalk	*icw)
 {
+	bool			sync;
+
+	sync = icw && (icw->icw_flags & XFS_ICWALK_FLAG_SYNC);
+
 	/*
 	 * Just clear the tag if we have an empty cow fork or none at all. It's
 	 * possible the inode was fully unshared since it was originally tagged.
@@ -1253,9 +1256,21 @@ xfs_prep_free_cowblocks(
 	}
 
 	/*
-	 * If the mapping is dirty or under writeback we cannot touch the
-	 * CoW fork.  Leave it alone if we're in the midst of a directio.
+	 * A cowblocks trim of an inode can have a significant effect on
+	 * fragmentation even when a reasonable COW extent size hint is set.
+	 * Therefore, we prefer to not process cowblocks unless they are clean
+	 * and idle. We can never process a cowblocks inode that is dirty or has
+	 * in-flight I/O under any circumstances, because outstanding writeback
+	 * or dio expects targeted COW fork blocks exist through write
+	 * completion where they can be remapped into the data fork.
+	 *
+	 * Therefore, the heuristic used here is to never process inodes
+	 * currently opened for write from background (i.e. non-sync) scans. For
+	 * sync scans, use the pagecache/dio state of the inode to ensure we
+	 * never free COW fork blocks out from under pending I/O.
 	 */
+	if (!sync && inode_is_open_for_write(VFS_I(ip)))
+		return false;
 	if ((VFS_I(ip)->i_state & I_DIRTY_PAGES) ||
 	    mapping_tagged(VFS_I(ip)->i_mapping, PAGECACHE_TAG_DIRTY) ||
 	    mapping_tagged(VFS_I(ip)->i_mapping, PAGECACHE_TAG_WRITEBACK) ||
@@ -1291,7 +1306,7 @@ xfs_inode_free_cowblocks(
 	if (!xfs_iflags_test(ip, XFS_ICOWBLOCKS))
 		return 0;
 
-	if (!xfs_prep_free_cowblocks(ip))
+	if (!xfs_prep_free_cowblocks(ip, icw))
 		return 0;
 
 	if (!xfs_icwalk_match(ip, icw))
@@ -1320,7 +1335,7 @@ xfs_inode_free_cowblocks(
 	 * Check again, nobody else should be able to dirty blocks or change
 	 * the reflink iflag now that we have the first two locks held.
 	 */
-	if (xfs_prep_free_cowblocks(ip))
+	if (xfs_prep_free_cowblocks(ip, icw))
 		ret = xfs_reflink_cancel_cow_range(ip, 0, NULLFILEOFF, false);
 	return ret;
 }