Dropbox Location Change on MacOS 12.6

With respect again, Megan, how are you going to “pass our feedback along“ if you don’t seem to understand what it is that we’re discussing? We’re not offering “feedback” as much as we’re asking a question about the future usefulness of the product itself. Clearly, no one that Dropbox has assigned to interact with this forum is able to answer.

I don’t think that any of us here are interested at all in the Dropbox desktop app. I think we’d all prefer if it wasn’t even there. We use Dropbox passively in the Finder as we always have. We have large, paid Dropbox accounts, and the majority of us have internal drives on our Mac that are smaller than our 2TB Dropbox storage. We have always been able to keep our entire Dropbox synced locally by way of an external drive. Now we're being notified that a change in this functionality is being forced upon us, and we are asking whether or not this change is permanent, so that we might be patient for some amount of time with Dropbox to develop a workaround before we cancel our paid Dropbox accounts and look elsewhere.

If you want “feedback,” here’s some feedback: There is a lack of explanation and transparency from Dropbox as to why this change is necessary (if it truly is). There needs to be more clarity to your customers. There is also a clear lack of expertise demonstrated by their representatives in this forum.

Agree again with mf88.

They (Dropbox) keeps dodging the question of WHY this change is necessary and if it's permanent?

I'm sure Dropbox-team know very well that this is going to be a "big thing". Are they forced to do it? If so, for what reason? Is it a technical issue?

(I just can't be...it's 2022...really?)

Or perhaps you could point us to the MacOS documentation that says you are not allowed and are not able to make the content elsewhere on the machine?  That seems to be the implication from Meghan's statements although we often find that such broad statements are interpretations.  Which is why, I think, people have been asking both "why" and "what does the Dropbox team plan to do" about our need for the old features (described earlier).

How can I force the Dropbox location change?

I want to update to macOS 13 and want to do the Dropbox Location Change first.

I have Dropbox version 161.4.4923 installed.

However, I am not offered the option to do this and my files are still in the old location.

Dropbox v161.4.4923 was automatically installed on my Macbook Pro under Mac OS 10.14.6.

My Dropbox folder is still located in my home directory, so it is NOT in ~/Library/CloudStorage.

I have a 2 TB Dropbox Personal Plus account with some 784 GB of data of which 337 GB on the

local disk. 

My question is:

Can I now safely update MacOS to 10.12.3 and later versions? Will the migration of the Dropbox

folder to ~/Library/CloudStorage happen correctly, despite v161.4.4923 already having been installed

on my system before the Mac OS update?

Hi mk53, the rollout to the new location of the Dropbox folder and its other features is being done gradually at this stage.

This means it is not guaranteed that the Dropbox folder would immediately change location when you upgrade.

Hey all, and thanks for writing back.

As with any operating system, macOS is updated regularly and with that we must keep the Dropbox desktop app aligned with any requirements set out by an OS.

Keeping aligned to those requirements ensures that the Dropbox desktop app will provide the best possible experience for all our customers in to the future.

We’ll be sure to pass your feedback along to our Product team.

Thank you.

Hi mf88, I hope it’s OK to jump in, too. 

I can understand your frustration on this matter.

If that’s alright, we can log a ticket instead and have our support team further assist.

Hi mrc247, thank you for reaching out.

Full support for macOS 12.5 and higher has started rolling out. Broader availability has begun this month as we work to preserve the reliability and quality of our sync experience. You will be notified when you’re eligible.

If you’re interested in joining our private beta, you can turn on early releases. You can also keep up to date with what is supported on macOS 12.3 and higher here.

Thank you!

Or you can tell apple, that your customer find their policy sucks!