Dropbox Apple Silicon (M1) install

[wwmiller3]

Hi,

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro 13" with the M1 processor and I cannot seem to get a native install of Dropbox for this chipset. From searching the community, it seems like M1 support should be available in the latest installer. However, trying that plus the latest beta build all ask me to install Rosetta during installation. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Warren

[Wvp]

I agree on voting, but I also think this is not a feature request. Most users won't vote for this, because they don't even know what they are voting for. There are more requests that should not need a vote, they seem very obvious, for example:

• dark-mode, every OS and every App I use have these features, it's requested many times. Even now that Dropbox is basically a web-app running on the desktop Dark Mode this request is stil "In Review". It's like Dropbox is living in a cave :S (source)
• The overlay icons problem in Windows, it's basically a bug.. or at least a dirty hack from Dropbox (source)

In regard to M1 support, how can this be blocked as a 'suggestion', is Dropbox going to wait until it just breaks? (oh, wait they did that last year) (source ). The developers probably know that Rosetta 2, which is used as a temporary compatibility layer is just that: "a temporary compatibility layer" provided by Apple to give developers some time to port over to the new architecture, user should not need to vote to get this in the developers agenda!

My guess is that it is probably on the agenda, the question is: are we going to need to wait until it breaks, like last year.

[rmatec]

Another month and no news from Dropbox. 

Dropbox is now the ONLY application running on Rosetta on my MacBook. We already knew people at Dropbox are just a bunch of lazy bastards but this is just going too far.

I am not renewing my subscription.

[Doug T.]

i was just thinking about renewing my sub, and now that i see they don't have native m1 support, i won't be.  Onedrive does not either, and it's slow as heck.  Google drive does, so I may just put my stuff there.

[Wvp]

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@Doug T. wrote:

i was just thinking about renewing my sub, and now that i see they don't have native m1 support, i won't be.  Onedrive does not either, and it's slow as heck.  Google drive does, so I may just put my stuff there.

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Google drive also has no native version for Apple Silicon as far as I know of. Onedrive will be coming with a native version, but to be honest OneDrive on Apple Silicon does not behave well on my machine. Dropbox al least works without problems on my Apple Silicon device. The only service I know that has a native Apple Silicon version is Sync.com. The issue I have with Sync.com is that the iOS app is slow. On the desktop Sync.com seems to performs OK, it also has the benefit of being end-to-end encrypted.

[Doug T.]

Google drive on my m1 shows Apple as the type.

[JOfE]

I agree. 

But Adobe gets my vote for worst of the worst.

[mbingel]

Open-source Dropbox client that runs natively on Apple Silicon:
https://github.com/SamSchott/maestral

[Wvp]

@JOfE I agree.. Adobe's way of distributing app is the worst I have ever seen.. they bundle so much crap into their Creative Cloud installation it is unbelievable. You cannot even disable their Sync service :(. I still have a Creative Cloud subscription, but I am evaluating the Serif Affinity products. The only Adobe software I would like to keep using is Lightroom CC and I can use this as a separate application which is also native Apple Silicon.

A have been evaluating a lot of sync services lately and Dropbox still is one of the better experiences, especially on MacOS. I'm a bit hesitant on using Google Drive because of the compatibility issues with specific MacOS files (file bundles). This is the same with OneDrive. Dropbox seems to be the beste supported Cloud storage for many MacOS developers.

I just do not like the way Dropbox sometimes (does not) respond to certain questions like in this case the Apple Silicon native support. The development seems very focussed on business users and less on personal use. Things like workspaces, focus on sharing files etc. is al very nice but it is not optional.

I tried Dropbox Paper to see if I could get more value out of this, but it does not integrate well and performance is not very good.. development also seems slow for Paper. There is a Beta desktop application (but it seems unsupported?), which is just a wrapper for the web application, but it is horrible to use.

Bottom line: If you are working mainly from within Dropbox and using it integrated applications like Zoom, Slack etc. Dropbox does add some value. If you just use it as a way to sync files, have version history and do some file sharing as a personal user it is getting to bloated in my opinion.

[Wvp]

@mbingel Indeed Maestral work fine, it does not have al the features of the Dropbox client. It misses things like block level sync and an easy way to see the status of your files. The upside is that you can sync multiple accounts.

[mbingel]

@Wvp Agree, I just don't want to install Rosetta on my M1 Mac.

I need basic Dropbox support to have my files local and a backup in Dropbox. So this helps me as a workaround 🙂