You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Request: All files available offline by default
Moving the Mac to the new File Provider is great - very happy this is finally happening and support on the new M1 is much better. Kudos!
Feature request: Really miss the feature to have Dropbox...
Hi everyone, and thanks for your patience.
We're re-launching the option to choose the default status of synced files in the Dropbox desktop application (in the Preferences > Sync tab) for users of the newer File Provider version.
It should be available to you shortly. If you haven't received it yet, make sure to update your desktop app, and let us know if you have any questions!
... and one thing to ask for clarification: how would I click on the Dropbox root? It is no longer a folder in Finder, but only a "location" in the sidebar. Right-clicking that location doesn't offer the Dropbox context menus. So I can right-click on folders within Dropbox, but not the "root" folder and described in this suggestion. Am I missing how to do this? Thank you!
Dave
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi Dave, could you perhaps share if this is tracked internally as a regression issue?
I'm conscious that the title of this thread hints at it being a Feature Request but it definitely isn't. This current behaviour was introduced in recent MacOS clients and is a big step backwards compared to the online/offline 'default' option Dropbox offered for years. Us clicking make available offline every time even a single file is added is not tenable in the long run.
Thanks Dave - adding my 'voice' to this request for the feature to be reinstated. It seems broken - there is a preference setting 'New files default: Available offline' which doesn't appear to work, we are having to manually sync files.
Hi. I am having the same issue but cannot find Dropbox in "Locations" or "Cloudstorage". I am on MacOS Monterey 12.6.3, where Dropbox only appears in "Applications", and right-clicking on it does not surface the Dropbox menu with the desired option, but only the usual MacOS menu as for any other item. How can we have our offline files by default back?
See https://help.dropbox.com/installs/locate-dropbox-folder for instructions on how to find your Dropbox folder location. In particular look at "How to programmatically find Dropbox folder paths" - expand the macOS section. Note to find files and folders prefixed with . (these are normally hidden) you will need to toggle them into view with "command + shift + . (period))" The same sequence will rehide them once you are done.
@bhunt01, thank you for that trick. It seems to be working. My Mac seems now to be updating its 55,000 files... fingers crossed!
Hopefully this will provide a lasting solution. I'm not superconfident since the answer I had from Dropbox Support was "as part of the new upgrade for the desktop application to be compliant with the new security processes with macOS, the option to make all syncing available offline has been removed" - they suggest making files and folders available offline manually, one by one. So I live in fear of the option going away for good.
Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it!
