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 support for MacOS 12.3 - can we finally upgrade?
Hi, I cannot find anywhere anyone saying that Dropbox properly supports MacOS 12.3, even though it was released weeks ago and has now been superseded by 12.3.1 with zero-day fixes. I can find discus...
On the plus side I do see that there is finally native support for Apple silicon! Yea!
Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi paul20, thanks for your interest in this!
We’re actively working on full support for macOS 12.3 (Monterey). You can read more info in this article from our Help Center.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Ok, so you're still working on properly supporting macOS 12.3. In the meantime, what limitations and/or bugs do we know exist if we go ahead and upgrade to macOS 12.3 without joining the beta program? I am aware that online-only files will show as zero size and may not be possible to open unless opened from the Finder.
If we upgrade to macOS 12.3/12.3.1, do you recommend we use the normal version of Dropbox, or upgrade to the beta channel?
Keeping my machine on macOS 12.2.1 is a security risk. But my data is really important to me too, and I don't like feeling like I have to balance those against each other. (I count 37 system-level security problems fixed in 12.3. Fortunately only one of those is remote code execution. 2 more problems were fixed in 12.3.1, both of which Apple says they have been told have been actively exploited.)
It's obvious that Dropbox stopped caring about their Mac software (and by extension, their Mac customers) years ago. I can't hold off updating my macOS for much longer. What you are forcing me to do, Dropbox team. is seriously reconsider my relationship with DP as my cloud-share solution. What a slide—10 years ago DP was a great Mac software developer. Frankly, I'll be glad when I can finally expunge your **bleep**ty resource-hogging crapware from my machine. Why are my fans suddenly going nuts? Silly me, just Dropbox crashing and relaunching itself in the background again, and spawning about 100 threads at 100% cpu each just to perform the initial sync yet again. The message is loud and clear (even above all that fan noise), Mac users: Dropbox doesn't want your business. So maybe it's time to go somewhere that does.
As soon as anyone gets a "save to cloud only / make available offline" replacement service that works how Dropbox used to - I'm off.
Is there an update? Dropbox promised to have this fixed in Q4 2022. Please advise! Thanks.
I think they're rolling out the updates gradually at the moment. For example you can check this support article about the changes in the update:
https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changesI've also seen users getting a notification in their desktop app to upgrade dropbox, after which it moved the home folder to the new CloudStorage folder inside the library.
After asking support twice (different people) and getting the worst nonsense answers from people who have zero knowledge about the issues with Mac OS, I just gave up trying to get info.
What would be handy is if they put a date on when they published / updated a note like this. Also this not being able to store files on an external drive is going to be quite problematic for businesses who have large amounts of data. Hmmm.... I think they've really f'd up here. I don't think they've really thought about their main customer base and the large file sizes they use tied in with the need for faster but smaller hard drives people have got, especially if they're on laptops.
Looking at all of it it does seem to be a right old mess. A lot of people are not going to be happy.
Hope this helps some folks. I eventually heard back from Dropbox support and working with a colleague figured out how to open Incopy Files from Dropbox while running MacOS 13.0 (Ventura). Instructions that we shared with our co-workers below-- we're a quarterly publication:
Here’s how to open InCopy files from Dropbox if using a current,up-to-date version of MacOS.
NOTE: If you’re currently opening InCopy files with an old MacOS, say version 12, you may want to keep doing it that way. But for those running, say 13.0, try this:
First, if you have signed up for beta versions of Dropbox, turn that off! That's from Dropbox support and contradicts their messaging but whatever, just do it.
Second, you’ll need to install the latest stable version of the Dropbox desktop application.
For these two tasks, you will need to follow these steps to verify that you have opted out of “Include me in early releases” option in your settings on Dropbox.com. This will ensure that the application does not automatically update to the beta build after you install the latest stable build:- Log in to www.Dropbox.com using your web browser.
- Click on you account picture/avatar at the top right corner of the page.
- Click on “Settings”.
- From the “General” tab, scroll down to the section titled “Preferences” and uncheck the box next to “Include me in early releases” if it is checked.
Then, use the following link to install the latest stable version of the Dropbox desktop application: https://www.dropbox.com/download
Once you install the stable build, it might take some time to re-index the files and sync any pending changes.
THEN:
The Incopy files MUST be opened from Dropbox desktop app (use the icon in the menu bar, not the InCopy pulldown menu).- Using Dropbox icon (again not Incopy), open the Incopy story folder.
- Locate the assignment folder. It will be labeled [story slug]_issue 23 Assignments.
- Open the content folder and click on each of the .icml files to open them. There may be many of them.
- Once all the .icml files are displayed in Incopy, close the files by clicking the small “x” on each of them.
- Then go back to the Dropbox icon/window and open the Assignment 1.icma file. Click to open it. You now should see all the file’s elements in the Incopy program in layout view.
- After you do this, the next time you access a story you should be able to open an .icma file directly— no need to download the .icml components again as they’re stored locally —for a week or two, or until the layout changes.
Not intuitive, but it works. Please give it a try. Good luck!Can anyone post a screenshot of the new version of Dropbox working properly on macos 12.5 and above? I think most of us would like to see it functioning as it should before we upgrade.
The last post on the upgrade for Mac Monterey support was in April (or have I missed something). The latest updates to Monterey, now at 12.5.1, still have issues with Dropbox. It appears, from the analysis that I have had done to my machine, that the slowdowns I am experiencing (beachballing ALL the time and slow open for apps) are linked to Dropbox. Is anyone else having the same issue?
- Only for the past 4+ years. It's the Dropbox gold standard of mediocre software we keep coming back for. My solution recently is to revoke Dropbox's login at startup privileges and only launch it now and then to let it sync, then quit the app again. Which is a terrible way to live but better than letting DP waste your Mac's resources...
Thanks for the tip. I will do that until I get my files moved. I was using Dropbox long before becoming a Mac user. But yes, it may be past time to make the switch.
