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Forum Discussion
After upgrading to Ventura, cannot start dropbox app
Hi, my dropbox app was working beforehand. I recently uggraded to Mac OS Ventura but now it's not working or syncing. I'm getting the error message "couldn't start dropbox" or sync. So I did the adva...
Hello friend.
Unfortunately, after several tests I did, the only alternative I found was to delete the aforementioned folders and reinstall, thus correcting the permissions.
Here is a link where my suggestion was accepted as a solution.
If it helped you, leave a Like. 🙂
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Apps-and-Installations/Moving-Dropbox-folder-from-Library-CloudStorage/m-p/654283#M49803
Here's what worked for me.
Go to Settings->Security->Devices in the web app, and delete ANY devices you are no longer using. There appears to be a limit. Mine was triggered when I changed my login id on MacOS Ventura (13.4.1.c), which sent me over the limit.
Seems like something they should have caught in testing.
This also appears to have resolved my issue. I removed years of old device connections per @wgroth2 suggestion and then simply restarted my MBP. Dropbox finally appears to be working again.
This comes after weeks of issues with finder becoming totally unresponsive, system hanging due to fileprovider smashing resources with whatever it was doing with/for Dropbox, countless restarts, countless re-installs, countless hours (days) wasted syncing, moving and re-syncing Dropbox content.
I'll reserve judgement of this being a "solution" just for now, but it's by far the closest I've been since this debacle started. Very disappointed to see how long others have been experiencing this issue, without a definitive solution from Dropbox.
So as an update:
I did need to redo the following (which I had already done before, but re-did again after removing old devices as per my previous post referencing @wgroth2 suggestion):
- uninstall Dropbox
- In your terminal app of choice:
- `sudo mv ~/.dropbox ~/.Trash/dot_dropbox.old`
- `sudo mv ~/Library/Dropbox ~/.Trash/libDropbox.old`
- `sudo mv ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox ~/.Trash/Dropbox.old`
- Restart
- Download & install latest Dropbox client
- Run the install dmg and follow the prompts to setup as normal up to selecting folders to sync
- This time I selected only a single root folder that contained only a single file to sync
- Wait for that to finish
- Restart
- Click on Dropbox icon and click the alert message link to install using `fileproviderd` config
- Wait for that to finish & confirm files have moved
- * Click Dropbox menubar icon, then on your profile avatar, then on "Quit"
- * In you terminal app of choice:
- `sudo mv ~/.Trash/Dropbox.old/* ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox`
- * Restart
- Wait for Dropbox to complete sync & index
- OPTIONAL - Continue to cross your fingers, hope & pray that this is the end of this debacle
* Steps 11 - 13 - I actually did in Safe Boot mode, because I was completely over this and wanted to give it every chance of working. I presume that this isn't actually necessary.
Credit for the concept of the above steps to @elizeufreitas which you can see on about page 3-4 of this topic. So far so good, but I guess only time will tell.
ps - I get that it looks like a lot and maybe a little confusing (and yes, definitely not something that should be required to install a paid service), but it isn't difficult.
I rant into this again, and had to do mostly this. These are the most complete instructions, and I recommend others follow the above.
