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
Dropbox folder bounces in the dock on Mac when syncing.
NOTE: a thread already exists for this issue but was closed without a solution. I'm writing this here to reopen it.
The Dropbox folder in my dock (Mac OS Sequoia) bounces every time a file is u...
Thanks Megan for following up 🙂
I only recently re-added the Dropbox folder to my dock about a week ago, and its been occurring the whole time. I believe I also had it in my dock 1 year or so ago without this issue, but I can't be certain.
I'm using v209.4.3661 on macOS 15.0.1 on the Apple Silicon/ARM platform.
Megan
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThanks for the heads up izaacmp! 😀
I did some digging, and this might be related to your OS, and the settings there rather than Dropbox, but in any case we'll look into it to see what we can find.
Have you tried turning off "animate opening applications" in System Preferences, by any chance?
Thanks for looking into this. I tried your suggestion and I really thought it might work—but it didn't.
However, it did have me thinking a bit more about the interaction between the Dropbox App, the Dock, and the Dropbox Folder. The Downloads folder on the Mac does the same animation anytime something from Safari finishes downloading to the folder. I assume there is a system event that is triggered when the Dropbox App finishes syncing a file. There should be a way for Dropbox to not trigger this animation though. I'm now looking for manual overrides.
peterlvilimDropbox Engineer
Hello!
I'm an engineer at Dropbox. Would you be able to record and share a video of the problem? If there is an action that leads to it happening (eg add content on another computer or on the web so it syncs down onto the machine) that would be helpful to include as well. Thanks!
Hi Peterlvilim,
Thank you for responding.
Whenever a "online-only" file is synced/activated/downloaded on my computer, the DropBox folder icon in my dock will bounce. Sometimes, the folder randomly bounces even when nothing is being synced (according to the status in the Dropbox menu bar applet). For instance, while writing this very paragraph, the icon in my dock representing the Dropbox folder bounced randomly, and the Dropbox client said "everything is up to date" both before and after it bounced.
In video linked here, I have reproduced one condition that always causes the icon to bounce: opening an online-only file (or previewing a file in quick-look). As soon as the data for the file has synced/downloaded, the icon will bounce to presumably indicate the file is ready.
The scenario I recorded, while not desired, isn't quite as frustrating as another scenario I frequently encounter: I will be working on a task such as writing a document when randomly, and without any files being synced, the dropbox folder icon will bounce on my dock interrupting my focus.
Another condition in which it can occur is if Dropbox is syncing files in the background—like when its syncing data that was uploaded from another computer—it may bounce in my dock each time it finishes syncing a file. Multiply this by a hundred files and the icon will bounce 100 times. Unfortunately I wasn't able to replicate this scenario on video either.
I'm using Dropbox Desktop v209.4.3661 on macOS 15.0.1 on the Apple Silicon/ARM platform.
