We are aware of the issue with the badge emails resending to everyone, we apologise for the inconvenience - learn more here.

Forum Discussion

Minion1212's avatar
Minion1212
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago

Dropbox using too much RAM memory - macOS Monterey

I use Dropbox in OS Monterey. I am not a heavy user in terms of number of files and usage complexity. I just use to sync files. My DB account has 3.8 Gb in files. Despite this simple usage, DB app i...
Desktop
Mac
Sync
Walter's avatar
Walter
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
Hello there Minion1212, sorry to hear about this.

Could you please send me the app's version and status as shown in your menu bar?

A screenshot of the high RAM usage would also help!

Thanks!
biomarks's avatar
biomarks
Helpful | Level 5
3 years ago

57.57GB memory?????

Hi, keeping the same thread in case it helps. New computer Monterrey, mbpro w32gb memory, new install of dropbox, no smart sync.

Got a notice that my applications were using too much memory - but there were few and they were small. Checked Activity Monitor and ????

 

help! this is one serious leak.

 

 

  • biomarks's avatar
    biomarks
    Helpful | Level 5
    3 years ago

    an update. After rebooting, i have kept a watch on dropbox and it has steadily crept up over the past four days - currently at 2.47 GB. Nothing like before thankfully!

  • goBiGGER's avatar
    goBiGGER
    Explorer | Level 4
    2 years ago

    same here on a new Mac Studio 64GB, new install. 31GB+ dropbox memory usage.... 😞 

    • Gualo's avatar
      Gualo
      Explorer | Level 4
      2 years ago

      I am also seeing similar problems on MacOS Monterey (12.6.8).

      Dropbox RAM memory usage starts at around 700MB after a cold restart and initialisation and will rapidly grow to around 1GB then continues growing albeit at a slower rate.

      I have an older MacMini with 8 GB of RAM and Dropbox alone consumes between 10% to 20% of that memory, so I'm forced to quit the program a few times a day.

      I have a little more than 700 000 files in Dropbox, most of them small files of a few KB for a total space of around 600GB.

      I read somewhere in your site that the program needs all that RAM memory to keep track of the files it manages, but what I don't understand is why you don't do as everybody else and use a database to keep track of all that information instead of keeping it in memory. Disks are fast enough, specially SSD drives, and anyway Dropbox is not fast enough for that to be an issue.

       

      • Flinlock's avatar
        Flinlock
        New member | Level 2
        2 years ago

        Same problem here. Macbook Air M2 with 8GB of RAM, Ventura 13.5.2.

         

        Dropbox uses ~630MB of memory after a clean restart. 448MB of that is for the main Dropbox application, which is bad enough, but then I noticed all the Dropbox Helper processes that are using a bunch more memory... and it's using hundreds of threads?! This is while it's doing NOTHING, and I only have a few folders (maybe 100 files total) selected for syncing.

         

         

        Over time the memory usage creeps up steadily. This is ridiculous! I've used Dropbox for a long time but I might finally have to switch. 

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!