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
Syncing icons on the files in the Dropbox folder have changed
Hello
The Finder Extension Icons indicating whether a file or folder is Online Only or Available Offline are showing up in my Finder, however, the statuses are incorrect. For instance a folder that contains files that are both Online Only files and Available Offline files is showing a cloud icon, when it should be showing a white circle with a green checkmark and green outline. I think the Finder Extension is confused. Is there a way to reset the Finder Extension so the icons show correctly without changing the Online Only or Available Offline settings that I have for my files/folders? I do not want to change the statuses of my files/folders, I just want the icons to indicate the statuses correctly. Thank you.
Mac 10.14.6
Dropbox 152.4.4880
Hello,
I find the new Icon Setup useless.
I suggest to bring it back as it was before the Update.
I think the most important thing is to be able to know if there's a SYNCHED LOCAL File in a Folder, that is eaten your Local HD Space.
So the Grey Icon was super useful before the Icons Update. It showed that there were no SYNCHED file in the Folder.
Now the Grey Icon shows me if there ìs at least one Online-only file in the folder, but olso if there anything else (Synched full green, or Half green file in the folder). It's Basically useless... because the important thing is to know if there's some file left that weight on Local HD.
The best solution was that GREY Icon tells me that there is NO LOCAL SYNCHED file in the folder, so I know that the files inside that folder is Only on CLOUD, since the most important thind is managind and knowing witha a glance if there's some Local file in a folder.
Now I dont know at first glance if I have some local file in every folders... i have to open all the folders and look inside. Thant's vary bad Update.
Is there any chance to make it back as it was the Synch system?
Thank youAgreed. The new system is unbelievably useless and will force my company to move to another cloud client if dropbox can’t put it back how it was.
Who at Dropbox came up with this?
For synced files, we need to see
—Folders fully online only
—Folders mixed online/local
—Folders fully local
That’s how it was and it was very effective. the new system is just nuts and I cannot understand why they did this. Planning to move company elsewhere
Dropbox staff made it pretty clear to me that they don't have plans to change it back -- at least that's how I took it when I asked if they were considering going back and how soon that decision might be made because my plan renewal was coming up, and they responded by giving me the link with directions for closing my account!
I wasted the entire afternoon checking out Onedrive. Don't do it. Icons are basically the same as the new Dropbox ones, but without the weird opened by another app stuff. And they have lots of options for handling versioning.
But if you want to be able to share files between computers Onedrive automatically grabs your doc, photos, and desktop folders on your C drive and moves them into Onedrive! It says you can stop it from doing that, but it took mine anyway when I went back in to check it. And if you try to take them out of Onedrive and put them back where they belong, it deletes them. It deletes your original photos. And if they were saved to the cloud or still syncing, it permanently deletes them. (Nice, huh?) I lost almost all my desktop links and a bunch of preset, title, and other files from photo and editing programs. Mostly stuff that can be replaced because I keep my actual working catalogues elsewhere, but really irritating and will probably take many more hours to restore to fully working order. (Why editing programs stick catalogues, presets, and templates in "photos" on the C drive -- a drive I don't use, so don't include in my backup -- is a separate issue.) I never actually got the sharing function to work either, but I think I know what the issue was.
So now I'm p*ssed off at both Dropbox and Onedrive. Maybe I'll just go back to using portable SSDsfor big stuff like I used to do. Dropbox used to work pretty well - it had syncing issues, but I could easily see where it screwed up before and straighten it out. Now it's almost impossible with my deep file structure.
Anyway, despite the pricing and the fact that Onedrive seems like a a good replacement, I'd avoid it unless you want to just let it load whatever it wants or are starting completely fresh and can set up a file structure that really restricts what it automatically grabs.
I've got three more options to check before my Dropbox plan is up for renewal. I'll let you all know if I find anything that works well. And I'd love some recommendations.
I totally agree with you, the new icon system is bad and causing me a ton of previously unnecessary frustration. It's so hard now to free up space. The new updated icon categorization makes it impossible to know what folders have offlined files buried within them. I generally love Dropbox—and literally it was the old icon system that made smart-sync so incredible/streamlined/useful and had me signing Dropbox's praises to anyone that would listen. But, this new update is just so bad... it seems to have solved a problem that didn't exist, while creating a much worse problem that makes working with Dropbox so incredibly painful now. As we speak I need to clear up disk space, yet I'm faced with hundreds of folders that all now show the cloud icon (despite some of them having offlined files buried within)... so now to find where offlined files might be, I have to search through thousands of subfolders and dig through every last level to get to every individual file. Before, that whole process happened in a split second, simply by looking at the root folder's icon.
Dropbox, thank you for making a great product that really does make the work I do possible, but please revert back to the previous/better icon categorizing system. Please.
I though it was an issue but I realised it's a weird change to DB icon definitions. Earlier the white circle with a green outline and green checkmark meant a folder contains files that are both Online Only files and Available Offline. Now it signifies that a file or folder has been opened by double-clicking, or through a third-party application, and synced. That means we no longer have an icon that indicates a folder contains mixed sync status files but we do have Two icons that show a file is available and synced. Not a fan of this change. 💤
Yeah, the new system is completely asinine. Even the people at Dropbox don't seem to understand it or be able to explain it. Keep waiting for the next update in hope that this will go away.
Dropbox: Go back to the icons working like they did before!!!!
I REALLY need to be able to quickly seen when some files in a folder are synced and some are not. I do NOT need to know whether I opened them last with an app or on my computer. I pay for Dropbox to make my life easier, not for more complexity.
Since Dropbox changed the meaning/usage of the selective sync icons, Dropbox has been impossibly more difficult to use on a day to day basis. The previous and vastly superior selective sync icons were so perfect—at a quick glance you knew if a folder was fully online only, fully offline, or a mixture of both. It gave you all the information you needed, at a glance, and made freeing up space on your drive a breeze. It was so elegant in it's simplicity. The recent change though, has been such a huge step backward. Now you can no longer see at a glance if a folder contains a mixture of "offline" and "online" files; forcing you to dig into it's contents and look at every inclosed file individually. Sadly, this change has given so many diehard users no other option but to consider having to find alternatives to Dropbox.
Please either:
1) Bring back the old and far superior selective sync icon system, or
2) Create a 4th icon that denotes if a folder has a mixture of "online only" and "offline" files
Hello everyone
I would like to know why the icons associated with dropbox files have changed: from green with a white check mark (so that the file or folder is fully synchronized and saved locally) they have become white with green ticks (therefore that the folder contains a mixed files and folders available offline and online only, but all files are marked with this icon, not just folders!)
is it a bug? Will the icons return to the way they used to be? I would like to restore the old icons, then sync locallyThank you all!
Hi, I'm having the same issue here. A large amount of files stored locally are now all showing a green check mark in a white circle. I have a Macbook, an iMac and a Windows machine, fully up to date. I can't figure out any scheme that would explain the icons I'm seeing. There are folders with no icon, folders with a white check mark in a green circle, and folders and files with both white check marks in green circles and green check marks in green circles, yet everything is stored locally. So only the white check marks in green circles correspond to the icon descriptions on the Dropbox website. I'm fully sync'ed. Confusing.
If a folder shows a cloud, ALL contents of that folder should be Online Only. It makes absolutely no sense to indicate a folder with 10 local items and 1 cloud item as all being on the cloud. That top level folder needs to show the contents of that folder as being mixed, NOT all on-line only.
Please change the icons back to previous:
Cloud = ALL contents of the folder are Online Only
Green check white circle = Contents of folder is a mix of online and local files
White check green circle= contents of folder (or single file) is local only
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Hi TerenceC, Mantas212, rusdom, arigoldfilms, leandrosilva, William F.5, jackprest, ppadmin, Joseph R.15, michael tan.
Thank you for sharing your feedback.
Our Product and Design teams are continuing to work on this experience and your feedback is very important to us.
Our team is going to reach out to you via the email associated with your community profile so we can further investigate the impact on your workflow.
Thank you!
- I suggest you read through the whole forum. Everyone here, as well as all of the people working at our companies, are tired of explaining to dropbox how the company torched our workflows.
Dea All, since a few days I noticed that my dropbox app installed on Windows 11 behaves in a different way than usual. First, I no longer have the solid green dots in my off-line files but white-green dots, moreover the interfaces also changed (I had a menu to select off-line and online sync but now the comments are in the main preference menu). Any explanation? I am sure my explanation wasn't very clear, sorry.
- Hannah
Hey Frennys, thanks for posting to our Community.
Would you mind sending over some screenshots of the changes you see?
That way we can get a better understanding and a visual of what you mean.
Thanks in advance!
- Hannah
Hey johnrinek, thanks for taking the time to post here!
Are you seeing the green check mark in the white circle on files as well, instead of just folders?
Would you mind sending over some screenshots, explaining what you see, so we can have a visual as well?
Also, is syncing up to date on your Dropbox app? You can hover over the Dropbox icon in your menu bar, to check.
Thanks in advance.
@Hannah
Replying to your message:Hey @johnrinek, thanks for taking the time to post here!
Are you seeing the green check mark in the white circle on files as well, instead of just folders?
Would you mind sending over some screenshots, explaining what you see, so we can have a visual as well?
Also, is syncing up to date on your Dropbox app? You can hover over the Dropbox icon in your menu bar, to check.
Thanks in advance.
Please see screenshot attached (folder names have been blacked out for security). You will see that the root folder that is selected has a cloud icon, indicating that all the files in the folder are online only. The second folder in the path also has a cloud icon, indicating that all the files in the folder are online only. The third folder in the path has mixed statuses (available offline, online only, and both). What's more, in the third folder that has the mixed statuses, the icons are also not all correct. Essentially, I have no idea what the actual status is of any of the folders or files. Some icons are correct, some aren't. It is very important for me to know which files are local on my machine and which files are online only.
Please let me know how to reset the icons to be correct without changing the actual smart sync status of my folders and files.
Thank youJohn
Hi All,
I've recently had an issue where folders and individual files that are stored locally in my dropbox folder (in finder) are showing up with the "green tick on white background" not the "green tick on green background" as I would expect. I have to click on the file and "Make Available offline" to get the correct green tick to show. This is all for files that are 100% available and stored on my hard drive in local storage.
Also folder which previously showed the "green tick white background" as they held files both stored locally and online only are now showing up as the online only cloud icon. See the below file structure where everything in the folder "2022-07" is stored locally. All the files further in those folders down to individual files have the same "green tick on white background". You can also see my older "zzzTemplates" folder is still "solid green tick". The folder "2022" is also showing up as a cloud online only when it
The same thing happens for all new files I move into dropbox via finder.
I spoke with dropbox support and they were useless spent half an hour going in circles for them to then tell me that the "green tick white background" no means available online and offline, so trying here to see if anyone has the same experience, knows this is true or any other help.
I have reinstalled dropbox to latest version. Specs below:
Macbook Pro 14,3
OSX Mojave 10.14.6
Dropbox Build v152.4.4880
I've been using Dropbox for years on the Mac. Currently using Dropbox v 153.4.3932 on macOS Monterey 12.5. Two days ago most (80%) of folders and files switched from a green circle with a white check to a white circle with green check. There doesn't seem to be a pattern regarding why some are still green and some are now white. Any way to make the badges consistent? All of the files are still local and on online, so that doesn't seem to be the factor.
Yes, the new system of having two types of green synced icon is incredibly frustrating. For some reason, I have folders that are solid green and folders that are hollow green (even though they are completely local), and I have files that are solid green and files that are hollow green. Yet there is no difference between how I synced them in the first place or how I've used them since then. All of these files and folders are fully local.
I got the following description of the distinction from a Dropbox chat, and it makes NO sense to me:
>>
A file with the available icon (white background with a green tick), means that the file is downloaded to your PC/Mac. Files in this state have been made available by opening the file with a double click or using a 3rd party app.
A file with the online-only icon (grey background with a white cloud), means that the file is online-only and is merely a placeholder file which takes up close to zero bytes on your PC/Mac.
Sorry, I pasted the wrong section of my chat. I meant to post this part:
>>
A file with the available offline icon (green background with a white tick) means that the file is downloaded to your PC/Mac. Files in this state have been made available offline by right clicking the file and selecting Make available offline.
A file with the available icon (white background with a green tick) means that the file is downloaded to your PC/Mac. Files in this state have been made available by opening the file with a double click or using a 3rd party app.
I have this exact same issue. Any folder that has even just one file saved online only is now showing up with the offline cloud icon. This is REALLY problematic, since I use multiple layers in my filing system.
As others have noted, the green/white dots with the check also seem to have become a complete mess. I think in my entire 1.5 TB of files I have exactly 4 solid green dots, three of which are on top level files and one of which is on a file folder with just one file. So those have become completely useless as well. But the things showing up with a cloud when only some files in the folder are on-line only are the biggest problem.
It does the exact same thing on both my windows desktop and my surface 7. It just started in the last week or so. I'm on Windows 10 on both computers - there has been a recent Windows update, not sure if the Dropbox issue came before or after. But definitely not happy with how Dropbox is behaving.
