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 vs. Ventura nightmare (191.4.4995)
Welp, week two and the "new" Dropbox update continues to reek havoc on my iMac. I've read a lot of community threads, and can already weed out that this is not a "beta" version. I've installed DB ver...
UPDATE: Feb 12, 2024
For anyone who finds this thread and is having issues, it's been about a week now since my system has stabilized after updating to the most recent version of Dropbox Desktop app for mac, which initially caused so much trouble for me. I'll admit that I was not optimistic that the Dropbox desktop app for mac would ever be stable again in current Apple/Mac Operating Systems, but it did eventually seem to work itself out. The two keys that seemed to likely help make any difference, although I can't confirm it so it's just my best hunch, are quitting the "fileproviderd" process in the Apple Activity Monitor app, a dozen shut-downs and restarts over several days, and eventually, with enough time, it all returned back to normal—allowing me to do the two special resets. Good luck out there.
It looks like your support closes up for the weekend and is only available from Monday to Friday. Not great for users who are struggling with severe system issues caused, at least in part, by Dropbox desktop app for mac.
So I just tried something that seems to have had a little bit of a result. After several system restarts, and many more hours of my system finder not working consistently—and the topbar menu Dropbox icon showing "Connecting components," I did a Force Quit of the "fileproviderd" process in my Mac's Activity Monitor. It seems then when I force quit this process, it automatically re-opens, and when that happened, the Dropbox icon in the top menubar started to actually show my files being synced again.
I don't trust that things are working correctly yet, and, my system finder keeps crashing which makes me believe that this updated Dropbox desktop app is in conflict with my Mac OS Ventura system. But it was at least a minor bit of progress that might help inform your support team of what I should try next? Thanks.
UPDATE: I'm cautiously optimistic that I might be on or nearing the other side of this experience. It's been about a day since things were unstable. I'm no longer seeing "fileproviderd" cranking with high % of CPU usage. I'm not experiencing (Apple Mac OS Ventura) system Finder crashes or instability. An example of what was happening was I would not be able to move a simple JPG from my desktop to downloads folder without the finder bonking out. Or, if I opened up Apple Photos and tried to do a simple image export, it would freeze, likely due to the finder being so unstable. I'll update more in another day. Could it have been that it just took two weeks of on and off unstable issues while it indexed my files for the updated DB desktop app? The turning point (so far) seems to have been when I simply Force Quit "fileproviderd" process in Activity Monitor. The system automatically re-starts that process right after you Force Quit it, and eventually, I was able to do the Top-Menu Icon > Preferences > Account > (hold OPTION to see hidden buttons) 1. "Fix Hardlinks" and "Fix Permissions". Then after some time, and several reboots, it finally let me do those "Fix" processes without crashing, and eventually things started to calm down. I'm updating to hopefully help someone else out if you're in a bind like I was.
Thanks. But your email thread started bouncing over the weekend, so I'm not sure what that was about, but I had several replies that bounced back to me. So far, another day of steady and stable machine operations again. So that's good. And the "fileproviderd" process has not been staying spiked at high CPU usage % like it was before.
Does any of what I shared help tip you off to what I might have been experiencing before, and why any of that happened? Thanks!
- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hey tomgrin74, thanks for updating us and giving us a heads up!
I was able to check Walter's email, and saw that it was still open, in case you want to reply or report anything back to him.
Now as to why this might have happened, and what could have caused it: I have to admit it was a whirlwind of a case that could have been caused by a few different factors, that we tried to pinpoint based on the info you gave us.
We don't have specifics as of yet, but glad everything is behaving at the moment.
UPDATE: Feb 12, 2024
For anyone who finds this thread and is having issues, it's been about a week now since my system has stabilized after updating to the most recent version of Dropbox Desktop app for mac, which initially caused so much trouble for me. I'll admit that I was not optimistic that the Dropbox desktop app for mac would ever be stable again in current Apple/Mac Operating Systems, but it did eventually seem to work itself out. The two keys that seemed to likely help make any difference, although I can't confirm it so it's just my best hunch, are quitting the "fileproviderd" process in the Apple Activity Monitor app, a dozen shut-downs and restarts over several days, and eventually, with enough time, it all returned back to normal—allowing me to do the two special resets. Good luck out there.
Hi Megan,
I am trying to support someone who is having a similar issue while running Sonoma 14.2.1 and I keep seeing some Terminal commands being referenced. Can you please send me these commands so I can try them on the user's computer to see if it fixes the issue? Let me know if you need any other information from me. Thanks!
- Hannah
Hey ecampb13, thanks for joining the discussion.
Are you referring to the Terminal commands which help determine if there are any symlinks in the account?
If so, they are the below:
1) Open the Terminal app (Located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal). You can also search for "Terminal" using the magnifying glass at the top of your screen
2) Copy and paste the following line into the Terminal:
find ~/Dropbox -type l -exec ls -lah {} \;
Hi Hannah,
Thank you! We've confirmed that the user does not have any files or folders that have are symlinked. They're running the latest version of Dropbox app for Mac. Is there anything else to try that will stop fileproviderd from maxing out the CPU?
