MacOS 13.0 Ventura, and Dropbox follows OneDrive in forcing the folder on the system drive

[Emanuele B.]

With Monterey, OneDrive implemented the new apis from Apple for online syncing that demanded its main location be a specific folder on the system drive. 8 months later, the MacOS community section of their site is a collection of anger, accounts of giving up on the platform entirely, praise for Dropbox for not going the same way.

Except it just did, it only waited until Ventura, and now my 360GB Dropbox home folder is supposed to fit on a drive that has about 160GB available, and I guess it was Apple's fault all along, but this is still a major malus to my having any use for Dropbox, I want a full hard copy of my files on local and not having to download them on the fly. This is a bummer.

[TRO_Berlin]

The "advanced reinstall" or here called "sudo" method (sudo is just "running as admin in terminal") sounds like it is just the setup process we know from the old version of dropbox, where we can select external storage for the dropbox folder?

And this method via terminal / sudo works for the new ~/Library/CloudStorage Version of Dropbox to move it to external storage? Can someone confirm this?

[Michael S.197]

@TRO_Berlin
Yes, it works. It is something different than SymLinking a folder, and the new DropBox allows it.

[pollen]

Wait wait wait. The new Dropbox does allow you to keep your Dropbox folder on an external drive with that "advanced reinstall" thing? All this hubbub is unnecessary? The Dropbox support article stating that "changing the location of your Dropbox folder is no longer supported by macOS" is not fully true?

[nessus42]

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@pollen wrote:

Wait wait wait. The new Dropbox does allow you to keep your Dropbox folder on an external drive with that "advanced reinstall" thing? All this hubbub is unnecessary? The Dropbox support article stating that "changing the location of your Dropbox folder is no longer supported by macOS" is not fully true?

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It is my opinion that whoever is asserting this is incorrect. It is my understanding that the "new" version of Dropbox for Ventura does not support storing Dropbox-synced files on an external drive.

This doesn't mean there aren't ways to back out to an older version of Dropbox that still supports syncing files on an external drive, but it's not clear for how long Dropbox is going to continue to support this.

[Martin R.19]

There finally seems to be a life after/without Boxcryptor and Dropbox, as I have found two cloud services that offer a perfect combination and alternative for less than what I was paying for my monthly Dropbox Plus plan. Of course, Dropbox deleted my recommendation here in the community immediately, even though it solves all the problems most people are facing due to the changes at Dropbox. They don’t want to solve your problems that they caused! I also complained about Dropbox's poor and unprofessional communication. If they had done a better job and didn't ruin their product with bad decisions and strategies, like Microsoft once did with Skype, they wouldn't have to censor discussions about competing products simply because Dropbox was always better and no other product could compete. But then Dropbox screwed up and failed to implement Apple's API requirements in a timely and professional manner. As if that did not cause enough problems, they then bought Boxcryptor, which killed that product and left all Dropbox users without zero-knowledge encryption out in the cold. I don't know what has kept the people at Dropbox so busy that they haven't had time to make the API changes and implement zero-knowledge encryption in time while their competitors have. Don't get me wrong. Buying Boxcryptor is a great decision, but they should have planned everything in a professional way with continuous open communication. So far we don't know which paid plans will get Zero-Knowledge encryption and when it will happen. What do these amateurs at Dropbox expect? That we will just wait and see what happens to our unprotected data? Forget it, and now that they are not even willing to accept criticism, it just confirms once again that this is not the company I should be trusting with my data. I have already moved my data to a new zero-knowledge encrypted cloud service from Germany and it is working fantastically. Next month I will be switching from my paid Dropbox Plus plan back to the free 2GB plan, but I will of course continue to follow the discussion and monitor the upcoming changes.

[TRO_Berlin]

This is getting really confusing now.

Some people say "advanced reinstall / sudo method" works with the new Version of dropbox, and you can move your Dropbox Folder from ~/Library/CloudStorage to external storage

Then people say it does not work...?

I have tried alternatives for this now. Maestral is super slow with huge dropboxes (ours is way over 30TB). Even when I only sync a small 500MB Folder, it indexes all our 3 000 000 files and is slow in getting folder changes etc.

GoodSync always analyzes the whole folder, taking 6 hours to do so for one sync (at least it looks like it analyzes every time the task is running).

Syncing a local folder to a NAS (for example Synology) and then syncing with Dropbox from the NAS (Synology CloudSync) gives a lot of problems because of double syncing a folder in with 2 different directions (causing files to be deleted and so on)

[nessus42]

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@TRO_Berlin wrote:

This is getting really confusing now.

Some people say "advanced reinstall / sudo method" works with the new Version of dropbox, and you can move your Dropbox Folder from ~/Library/CloudStorage to external storage

Then people say it does not work...?

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I believe that it does work, but that when you do this, you are reverting to the "old" version of Dropbox, which may not be supported indefinitely. (Or maybe it will be, but who knows?)

[Fluk3]

Now might be a good time for Dropbox staff to clarify this ongoing confusion.

The current stable versions* can install the Dropbox folder to external drives and is not limited to the macOS Library folder in any version of macOS.

The current stable versions* can still automatically sync online-only files linked to Adobe Creative Cloud apps within macOS 12.2 and earlier.

The current stable versions* can not automatically sync online-only files linked to Adobe Creative Cloud apps within macOS 12.3 and later.

The opt-in early-release versions* can not install to external drives on any macOS version and are limited to the macOS Library folder in any version of macOS.

The opt-in early-release versions*  can automatically sync online-only files linked to Adobe Creative Cloud apps in any version of macOS.

*The opt-in early-release version may or may not have already been released as a stable version for some people in some regions.

Is any of this right or wrong, Dropbox staff?

Guys?

[nessus42]

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@Fluk3 wrote:

The opt-in beta versions* can not install to external drives on any macOS version and are limited to the macOS Library folder in any version of macOS.

The opt-in beta versions*  can automatically sync online-only files linked to Adobe Creative Cloud apps in any version of macOS.

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For me, the term "opt in" would be somewhat of a misnomer. "Opt-out-able" would be more accurate.

When I installed Dropbox, it immediately asked me to switch to the latest version. I don't recall seeing anything about it being "beta". It told me that this new version was the future of Dropbox, and the impression I got was that if I chose to opt out, I would just be delaying the inevitable pain to a later date.

I'm running Ventura, so my experience may be different from those who are not running the latest version of macOS.

[Fluk3]

I should have called it the early release opt-in.

If you go to dropbox.com/account/general

There is a preference toggle switch that says:

Early releases. Get included on early releases for new Dropbox features. Early release features are subject to these additional terms. Off by default

One needs to turn this on to get the early release that I was referring to (which I misnamed as the opt-in beta).

Presumably, if you did not enable this setting, then you did not install the early release - the version that discontinues the macOS 12.2 and earlier compatible extension required for online-only Adobe app links to automatically sync and which also enforces the Dropbox folder location in the macOS library folder.

However, it is unknown if some people in some regions are getting the early release as a stable version or not. Dropbox said this version would be "rolled out starting in November" but there has been no announcement and nobody knows for sure what's really going on.

Hence my suggestion that Dropbox drops us a line to clarify because this is all very confusing and not well documented at all.