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Forum Discussion
Smart sync icons missing
The venerable "missing smart sync icons" problem.
- MacOS Mojave 10.14.2
- Dropbox 64.4.141. (Professional Acct)
- Have reinstalled DB several times (including via full desktop download).
- Tried the "check-uncheck finder integration" (have uncheck, uninstalled, reinstalled, rechecked, too).
- Have unlinked account and relinked account.
- ForceQuit finder more times than I can remember.
- Have ForceQuit the Dropbox Finder Integration app.. every time b/f restarting or trying fresh install.
Menu options for local vs OnlineOnly are active and work. Just can't tell looking at any file/folder in Finder whether it is local or online only.
What am I missing?
OneDrive does this, no problem. Just about at my ropes end with DB.
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Jay:
Thank you for this suggestion. The first thing I did was restart in safemode, launched DropBox and verified the missing icons would appear. They did!! I then went about testing each loaded application for potential conflict. I did that by exiting each, then force-quitting/relaunching finder. Turns out, it was a fellow cloud storage app from Sync.com. I have notified them of the conflict and hereby am letting DB know as well. don't know whose software is the culprit, only know that you two don't play nice together.
In case anyone else finds this thread like me, the OneDrive Finder Extension will also mess things up. You can quit it from the Activity Monitor and then disable it in Settings>Extensions to make the Dropbox icons come back!
This did not work for me. Any other solutions?
- Jay
Hi, Jay -- I followed these five steps, but to no avail; I still can't see the Smart Sync icon. I'm running macOS Mojave, 10.14.2.
- Jay
Dropbox, please make a first-line response to go to System Preferences --> Extensions and simply uncheck all of the boxes and recheck them. That is way simpler than uninstalling and de-linking Dropbox a million times because we're told that will solve the problem.
nelewis wrote:Dropbox, please make a first-line response to go to System Preferences --> Extensions and simply uncheck all of the boxes and recheck them. That is way simpler than uninstalling and de-linking Dropbox a million times because we're told that will solve the problem.
Nelewis, Thanks! Too bad your post is on page 4.After trying everything mentioned plus re-installing dropbox, re-syncing etc,
this method finally worked!!! Don't focus on the fellow clouds messing around assertion.
Didn't even need to restart finder (mac OS 10.15.7)
I ran across this fix myself but still seems sot happen repeatedly after every reboot as a minimum.
nelewis wrote:Dropbox, please make a first-line response to go to System Preferences --> Extensions and simply uncheck all of the boxes and recheck them. That is way simpler than uninstalling and de-linking Dropbox a million times because we're told that will solve the problem.
Tried many of the suggestions here, but @nelewis' answer fixed it. THANK YOU!
Thanks! This solved it immediately after many other attempts did not provide any help.
Graphic converter extensions also do not play nice with smart sync icons. Dropbox smart sync icons re-appear after turning GraphicConverter extensions off.
In my case it is an application that I use to create new files in Finder called NewFileMenu. I have to disable/then re-enable this extension so my Dropbox file/folders sync icons show up again.
Thanks to all for the hint about other extensions interfering with Dropbox or vv.
Like user ucblu, I'm also using the NewFileMenu extension, and disabling that brought all of the sync-state badges back.
What's a little interesting is that, if I change any of the files to be online-only or locally-stored, the icon does update when the problematic extension is enabled (in other words, I disabled NewFileMenu and then re-enabled it).
However, if I disable the Dropbox extension, enable the NewFileMenu extension, and then enable the Dropbox extension (i.e. the Dropbox extension gets enabled after the NewFileMenu), then I don't get sync-state badges. Disabling NewFileMenu, after that, brings them back, and the badges update fine. Enabling NewFileMenu still seems to allow the badges to work fine. So, it appears to be an issue with the order they get loaded or enabled.
Same problem with extensions.
My DropBox and OneDrive extensions can work together, but the BetterZip one breaks them all
- Daphne
Hello, I am running El Capitan still (if it works, do not fix it) and I am having the same issue of not seeing the Smart Sync option, and none of the proposed solutions worked for me.
IMHO, we should be able to use Smart Sync without problems regardless of the programs that we actively use. I am sorry to say, but you should fix this problem from your end, not ours. We pay, we pretend a service.
Stefano.
Add the "Apollo Cloud" Extension from Promise to the list. Disable it and smart sync icons are there. Re-enable it and they are still there ;-).
It now works for me (Big Sur, latest version of DB)
It now works for me too, but is it really a "solution" to uninstall every other program that has a Finder extension/integration.
Admittedly, I'm in a minority, being on macOS, but can someone with Windows tell me whether it works alongside other apps that use icons in Windows Explorer?Temp Fix (Mac OSx): Force quit Finder
Not sure why it’s needed but it works
I just wanted to add somewhere on this community that I had similar issues with missing sync icons. Tried all the fixes mentioned here, but no luck. Then saw that someone mentioned Sophos. I removed all Sophos access to my system in system preferences > security & Privacy > Privacy and voila...sync icons are back! I know I need to figure out exactly which setting was actually causing the problem, but just wanted to post so people knew to check Sophos as the culprit!
BetterZip was the culprit for me.
BetterZip for me as well, although Expandrive and OneDrive also caused issues enough that I ended up uninstalling them as well...but really, should that be necessary just to get Dropbox to play nice? (not that that is playing nice, having to remove all the other kids from the playpen first)
I'd be very interested to hear from a developer if it is Apple's "playpen" that is a hostile environment or is it the child of Dropbox or BetterZip, OneDrive, etc. that has been raised badly?
I am using a Mac book M1 Max with OS Monterey, 12.3 and have no smart sync icons in the finder.
This is what dropbox recommended to me:
I have logged out of dropbox, terminated all dropbox processes in the activity monitor, restarted the finder with "exit immediately" and unfortunately have had no success in getting the icons to come back.
Do you have any ideas?
Thanks in advance- Megan
Hi oneswiss, welcome to our Community!
Can you check for the app's syncing status, and version and write back here to let me know? Let's make sure you're not using the Beta version of the app as a first step.
Thank you!
The problem seems to have gone away and the icons are showing. Syncing is working. Don't know the version of the app. Probably an old one since I'm running Mojave.
I had the same issue, it was a conflict with Avira
I am also having this issue. However, it is on a machine solely dedicated to Dropbox. There are no other apps other than the system installed items. When I check activity monitor all that is running is Dropbox and OS related items. Please advise. It is MacOS Monterey 12.4 on an M1 Mac Mini
- Hannah
Hey Jeff Marks, sorry to see your syncing icons are missing from your Dropbox folder.
What is the sync status and version of the Dropbox app on your computer?
You can hover over the Dropbox icon in your menu bar, to see this info.
Are you also missing context menu items (Dropbox right-click options) from the files in your Dropbox folder?
Files are up to date and running Dropbox on MacOS v166.4.2920
Hope this helps, but I had an issue like this and found out that it was due to Finder being glitched.
I was able to open the dropbox app and see the symbols, but when I would open finder there would seem to be no sync symbols next to any data.
I removed the Dropbox from the favorites sidebar and simply re added the dropbox application back to the sidebar.
