Recent Dropbox - Mac 12.3 Monterey support

[Nousmedis]

The official support page relating to Mac OS Monterey 12.3 Dropbox compatibility is 2 months old now, and Apple just released (April 2022) first beta version of 12.4 and patched 12.3 with 12.3.1, but still no references to current status other than "in late march we will release a beta version...". How can I know is the beta version is now secure or how many days, weeks or months (or years!) do we still need to wait for the final stable release of a 12.3 and up supported version of Dropbox?

[zaak]

@paul20   was trying to lighten things up a bit and be playful/sarcastic about it. But there's some element of truth in there given that Dropbox is essentially digging itself deep into the operating system to pull off this magic and is also competing with iCloud.  I would love to be wrong about this... but being a long time developer and an Apple developer, we can imagine that Apple is not super helpful/supportive here. Given Apple's history, it seems likely that Apple would be happy to sit by and watch Dropbox struggle either because what they are doing is impossible or at least extremely difficult.  

Would love to be proven wrong!  Maybe there's an Apple engineer out there who is dedicated to supporting Dropbox. My personal experience with Apple was on a small team where there was absolutely no support. 

So yeah. My take is that Dropbox is not simply up against an inherently challenging technical problem... they are potentially up against a political one as well. Or at the very least, they are "on their own" to figure it out. 

Just keeping myself amused with this rather than get more frustrated.

[Michael B.10]

@zaak

You may well be right. 

I have no doubt that all the bad experience being reported is genuine, but just to counterbalance it, and maybe give encouragement, I use Dropbox to synchronise data between my own two M1 MBAs, both on 12.4 or later and it all works correctly, (as I reported much earlier in this thread).

For the past two months my Dropbox data has been in ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox. 

My data is a mix of on-line only and local. 

Third party apps will open on-line only files directly (no separate download required).

My usage is extremely basic, no teams, just me, but Dropbox is doing everything I need and everything it ever did and it has been this way for over two months now.

My biggest problem was my third party apps which use Dropbox to sync data between devices, needed redirecting to look in the CloudStorage location, instead of the old /user location.

[sphen]

@Michael B.10 this perfectly illustrates how the lack of information/direction/progress from dropbox is frustrating. clearly if you dropbox is in that location they are using the new compatible file provider apis. i have tired on several machines to set up dropbox fresh and it never tries to put the files in the new location.  i am doing all my testing with a teams account however - who knows if they are excluding those users for now or what method they choose to have a dropbox client use the new apis or not.

when dropbox finally pulls the trigger on this switch - how are they going to handle the file moves? for business we really need details on what to expect for our users and how file paths/locations will work etc.

[zaak]

@Michael B.10 
just found this link in one of your old posts:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-for-macOS-12/Dropbox-Location-change-to-Library-CloudStorage...

looks like it's gone.

[Michael B.10]

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@zaak wrote:

@Michael B.10 
just found this link in one of your old posts:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-for-macOS-12/Dropbox-Location-change-to-Library-CloudStorage...

looks like it's gone.

---

Still there for me...but nothing surprises me about the Dropbox forums. Some threads are "closed access" and require extra sign in, and the discussions about the same subjects (eg this one) are fragmented all over the place. 

[Nousmedis]

@Michael B.10 

Does your Dropbox installation make the location change for your (automatically)? Because I'm using two different Macs, both with the same business account, and still All data stored in Macintosh HD/Users/MyUsername/Dropbox (myCompanyName) and thus, there is no way automatic Sync works.

Dropbox Build: 152.4.4880

Mac OS 12.4 Spanish language

Do I need to follow any steps to make it work again?

[Michael B.10]

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@Nousmedis wrote:

Does your Dropbox installation make the location change for your (automatically)? Because I'm using two different Macs, both with the same business account, and still All data stored in Macintosh HD/Users/MyUsername/Dropbox (myCompanyName) and thus, there is no way automatic Sync works.

Dropbox Build: 152.4.4880

Mac OS 12.4 Spanish language

Do I need to follow any steps to make it work again?

---

It did not happen automatically for me (though has for some people). My experience of forcing the change by complete uninstall and reinstall is detailed in this thread: 

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-desktop-client-builds/Beta-Build-147-3-4765/td-p/590978/page...

I have posted the link to page 2 because it contains a post by @jwl  which was particularly helpful.

My account is a simple Dropbox plus account. It is my hunch that the CloudStorage solution is not being rolled out to Teams and Business accounts at this time. This is only a hunch. It would be nice for Dropbox to explain the rollout policy!

[johnhalldesign]

Just came to this thread to figure out what's happening with this issue.  I am still running OS 12.1 on my two Macs since the January email from Dropbox—didn't want to mess with a Beta version. 

But my workflow internally and with clients is heavily dependent on Dropbox (I have a Dropbox Plus account), and really want to get my computers on the current OS before my busy season in the fall.

Doesn't seem encouraging reading through this thread that there is gonna be an easy upgrade any time soon, and starting to wonder if I'd be better off switching over to OneDrive or iCloud.  Those options would probably be easy enough to do internally, but with dozens of Shared Dropboxes with clients, not so easy on that end.

[smoocat]

Hi @zaak I can't find the CloudStorage folder you mentioned in your post. I'd like to try this but not only can I not find it but I can't seem to find anything about it on the web either. Is it a hidden folder?

[zaak]

@smoocat   I know nothing about it either. Just saw it mentioned. I think @Michael B.10 is the expert.  My sense from what I've seen floating about is that I'm not about to touch it myself. Looks like a "beta" thing that will eventually have more official support from Dropbox.... or not.  Waiting it out.