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Forum Discussion
"Dropbox needs to change permissions" message on startup
Lately, every time I start my Mac (OS 10.14.6) I get a message that reads (in full):
"Dropbox needs to change permissions for the Folder: /Users/[name]/Dropbox
Enter your password to allow this"
(I would attach a screenshot here but I can't figure out how.)
I enter the password and all is well, but it happens Every. Single. Time. I start my computer. After checking here for ideas, I checked for symlinks (there are none) and reinstalled Dropbox (so I am now running the latest version), but that has not helped at all. What now?
Hi Rachel R.2,
Can you try following commands in terminal:
sudo chflags -R noschg "/Users/$USER/Dropbox" sudo chflags -R nouchg "/Users/$USER/Dropbox" sudo chown -R "$USER" "/Users/$USER/Dropbox" chmod -R u+rw "/Users/$USER/Dropbox"
Will be asked for your password (sudo).
Hope this helps. :wink:
- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
Hey there Rachel R.2,
Welcome to the Dropbox Community! Let's see what we can find here.
As a first step, could you let me know if you get a hyperlink when you see the error message pop up? If you do, could you please click on it and post the log that you get?
Thanks in advance!
Hi, Lusil!
No, there is no link, just the location of my desktop Dropbox folder. If you tell me how to add a screenshot, I can do that.
- Lusil
If you can attach a screenshot in your reply, that would be very helpful! :grinning:
Thanks in advance, Rachel R.2!
So Apple insisted on auto-updating my contact details by a name I don't use.
They told world my name is James Newman, but I go by my second name ANDREW Newman.
This confuses my friends who have no idea who James is and why he is in their phone contact lists! They also lose my name and number!
Apple advised that the only way to stop this was to change all references deep in the belly of my mac
from user/jamesnewman/
to user/andrewnewman/
Since making that change Dropbox hasn't worked in the folders on my mac.
It presents the password request below on a repeating loop, but because the user/jamesnewman/ no longer exists, the permission cannot get updated.
When I enter the password, the box goes away, but nothing happens.
When I reopen DB, I get the prompt again.
90 minutes of chatting to apple support and trying various things hasn't helped.
We've tried
- delete app from mac
- delete folders
- reinstall
Any ninja ideas?
The solution in this thread, as other threads i've read, didn't work.
But, what worked was:
1) go in your Users folder and create a new folder with the same name as your old user (the own that the Dropbox alert is searching)
2) then open dropbox
3) BACKUP your dropbox folder just in case
4) if you have reached the 3 users, sign out this computer and try do the same steps as the first time your run Dropbox, but choose your new_user folder
5) the Dropbox will work nice and will re-sync all your files (that you already have in place) using the /Users/new_user/Dropbox folder
6) delete your Users/old_name folder
