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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anyone saying that Dropbox properly supports MacOS 12.3, even though it was released weeks ago and has now been superseded by 12.3.1 with zero-day fixes.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...
I finally had to upgrade my OS because I could no longer accept the risk of having an OS so out of date that it represents a major risk to my business. As such I now have to go through the painful process of dealing with Dropbox not automatically syncing files etc etc and at the same time now sucking up all the spare memory and processing power it can. My fans on my laptop have been non stop on all the time and Dropbox constantly says it's syncing, when it shouldn't be. That either tells me it never synced everything before and is therefore uploading new files, or old files I should say, or it's just on a constant cycle and stuck.
I used to love Dropbox. it was such a good piece of software but over the years it's just become bloatware and very akin to Microsoft, where it just builds on top of builds on top of builds on top of builds. I joined the beta programme as I was assured that once I upgraded my macOS I would get a notification to upgrade my Dropbox. Don't believe them. Absolute b*llocks that is.
I'm at a loss. I've been told the new Dropbox will be out in May. They just keep on delaying this. Obviously the concern for their customers is still [not] there and they'll just keep taking the money.
I switched my dropbox yesterday, it took about 4 hours before it was entirely done checking all the files (about 300k files). Had issues with continuous syncing too even though it wasn't doing anything, but for me it was some background process of dropbox still moving/checking everything. After about 2 additional hours the syncing was finally done, I got a popup from the Dropbox app saying it was done upgrading to the new Dropbox for Mac OS and all has been working fine since.
I can imagine if you have millions of files that'll need to be checked by the app if they were moved properly, it might take longer for it to really be done syncing etc.
- Subscribed to this in case anyone spots an identical set up as an alternative that works as this should before my annual fee is due.
Max users totally taken for a ride at some considerable cost. Was a perfect cloud based set up. Clearly no longer is. - Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hi UKD, let's jump right into this!
As Tirion2K22 mentioned before, if your content hasn't been moved to ~/Library/CloudStorage after updating, it seems you're not using the Dropbox for macOS, which utilizes Apple’s updated File Provider API for a more seamless experience.
In order for you to also use this version of Dropbox on the macOS, you would have received a notification, informing and asking you to join.
Now, based on the info you provided, it seems you're using our Beta version. It's also expected since it's not the stable version, that you'd experience the behavior you mentioned, about syncing being stuck.
That, and the very high number of files that you have (more than the soft limit of 300K) could cause for that syncing performance.
As a first step, I would suggest that you downgrade from the beta version. You can go into your account settings on the Dropbox website and turn Early releases off. After that, install one of the stable builds of the Dropbox application.
Can you give this a go, and let me know of any updates?
Thank you!
Tank goodness someone has said that. This is getting ridiculous. Have just been spent 20 minutes with technical support on chat for them to be completely unable to help (can't blame them, they're not developers).
Now stuck with a completely unusable dropbox as I have no access to my files (and spare me the "use your web browser" which quite frankly isn't an acceptable workaround: can I edit my raw files through my web browser?) and now have an unusable cloud storage.
I appreciate Megan taking time to try and help but "wait for files to re-index" is a bit rich. I've waited 24 hours leaving my computer running. And it's still stuck on the exact same number of files to index (with no idea on which file it might be stuck on - if it's even doing anything at all, I'm not convinced it's even trying - because the app isn't exactly very verbose and reports "no sync issue").
Even tried a full OS reinstall to see if that could help. Nope, exact same problem.
OneDrive is able to make it work and has been able to make it work for what, 1 year now? So it's not Apple's fault. It's been 1.5 years since that change has been announced. It's very dishonest to blame Apple on that one. What do I do in the meantime? Tell my clients "can't get started on your project, my app may or may not be re-indexing my files"? And I don't have a few million files like some people here, only a mere 300k.
It's unfortunate I can't a get a pro-rata refund because this would be the bare minimum, there is no chance I'm staying with Dropbox following this debacle.
The support team got back to me asking me if I had waited long enough for the indexing to happen. I think it's it fair to say that upward of 36 hours and still not a single file more being indexed is not expected behaviour. The response was quite frankly insulting considering the fact that the issue was explained in the initial message.
I did find a "workaround". I had to reinstall my OS (one more time, which is starting to get old, because it turns out that new version of dropbox prevents relinking your computer to your account if things get botched during the "migration" process and the mess was such that a formatting was the best option), install dropbox, NOT click on the update button and not get the new "experience". This is literally the only option I have at the moment (and anyone facing the same issue, take note, that's the best solution atm). And I'm praying the gods the app doesn't auto-update because if that happens, I will most likely lose access to my files again.
As far as I'm concerned, Dropbox is no longer a viable option since I can lose access to all my files with a simple update that was rushed out with minimal testing by the looks of it. Subscription has been cancelled and I'm now looking for an alternative, which is yet another annoyance to deal with.
- I don’t actually use the app because it’s a piece of crap. I don’t even know how to reactivate it even I wanted to.
The software on your Mac is also an app(lication), I'm pretty sure you use that right? For me on Mac OS 13.2.1 it works fine now, just took very long for it to be done with the syncing.
- I have that but no option or invite to upgrade so I’m stuck on the old piece of crap software.
Sigh… so fed up with this company. Is it dropbox business? If so, did you switch on the option in the admin console?
I got an email before saying I need switch it on at:
Admin console > Settings > Sync > Updates for Dropbox on macOS
Shortly after turning it on I got a notification on my laptop to upgrade my dropbox to the latest Dropbox for Mac OS.- I don’t have that option. I have opted in to the early release beta plan though.
