Smart sync icons missing

[Greg T.16]

The venerable "missing smart sync icons" problem.

• MacOS Mojave 10.14.2 
• Dropbox 64.4.141.  (Professional Acct)
• Have reinstalled DB several times (including via full desktop download).
• Tried the "check-uncheck finder integration"  (have uncheck, uninstalled, reinstalled, rechecked, too).
• Have unlinked account and relinked account.
• ForceQuit finder more times than I can remember.
• Have ForceQuit the Dropbox Finder Integration app.. every time b/f restarting or trying fresh install.

Menu options for local vs OnlineOnly are active and work. Just can't tell looking at any file/folder in Finder whether it is local or online only.

What am I missing?

OneDrive does this, no problem.  Just about at my ropes end with DB.

[Seth K.5]

I just wanted to add somewhere on this community that I had similar issues with missing sync icons. Tried all the fixes mentioned here, but no luck. Then saw that someone mentioned Sophos. I removed all Sophos access to my system in system preferences > security & Privacy > Privacy and voila...sync icons are back! I know I need to figure out exactly which setting was actually causing the problem, but just wanted to post so people knew to check Sophos as the culprit!

[lewis_c]

BetterZip was the culprit for me.

[tillkrueger]

BetterZip for me as well, although Expandrive and OneDrive also caused issues enough that I ended up uninstalling them as well...but really, should that be necessary just to get Dropbox to play nice? (not that that is playing nice, having to remove all the other kids from the playpen first)

[lewis_c]

I'd be very interested to hear from a developer if it is Apple's "playpen" that is a hostile environment or is it the child of Dropbox or BetterZip, OneDrive, etc. that has been raised badly?

[tillkrueger]

Good questions...I would love to find out about that as well...but this conversation isn't monitored by Dropbox dev staff, as far as I know. I guess that'd be a question for support.

...but what option would support have but to say that it's not Dropbox's fault? 😉

[JimBobR]

I'm a newbie here so if I'm relying incorrectly please forgive ...

My Dropbox icon in systray went missing a couple of days ago & not sure why.

However, I (re)ran the dropbox installer and it seemed to hangup.

So I disabled my Webroot temporarily whereupon installation completed immediately and icon reappeared 🙂

I haven't shutdown or restarted yet but I have high hopes the icon will remain.

The moral of the story - AV is apt to be the blame!

[hans_maier]

Add the "Apollo Cloud" Extension from Promise to the list. Disable it and smart sync icons are there. Re-enable it and they are still there ;-).

[Brucec]

Avira Anti Virus was the app conflicting with dropbox on my machine causing sync icons to vanish.

1. In the upper left corner, click on the Apple icon and select System Preferences.
2. In the third row, click on the Extensions icon.
3. In the left frame, click on Finder Extensions.
4. Deselect the finder extensions in the list to systematically test which one is problematic.
5. Close the System Preferences dialog.
6. Hold down the option key and then right-click on the Finder icon on the dock.
7. On the resulting pop-up menu, left-click on Relaunch.
   
   https://support.ti.davidson.edu/hc/en-us/articles/360035271813-Dropbox-Sync-Icons-Not-Visible-on-Loc...

[Connie M.4]

I had to disable iCloud to get the icons back. When I logged into iCloud again, I found that "Dropbox" was checked as one of the apps that iCloud uses. I unchecked it. The Dropbox icons are still there in the Finder window. But when I restarted the computer, they were gone again. (Another possible culprit is that Facetime was set up to receive calls from Google Voice. I turned that off and relaunched Finder but the DB icons are still gone.) Anyway, that's enough for today...no time to look at the other 77 replies, but thanks for keeping this question open.

You can skip the rest: mostly complaining about Apple and iCloud:

Note to self, step-by-step to access photos in Dropbox: 0. Find photo(s) and make a note of location 1. Load Lastpass to get iCloud passwords, 2. Turn off iCloud in Settings, 3. Relaunch Finder 4. Go to the Dropbox folder photo 5. Mark the photo for for local access and get it someplace where I can use it.

6. Log into iCloud again (to sync my calendar, email, messages etc. with other apple devices.) 6a, b, c etc: This involves entering at least three passwords. Go through all the necessary steps to tell iCloud no, I don't want news, stocks or "Home" (whatever that is). Accidentally misinterpret the interface regarding "Photos" (not a checkbox this time, a minus sign instead, so no, do not want to buy more space (because I have Dropbox!!)

6e. Go through and limit the apps that iCloud uses. (Dropbox was one of them: maybe the source of the problem?) 6f. Deal with all the side effects on the computer and other devices of logging off and on again to iCloud.

[oneswiss]

I am using a Mac book M1 Max with OS Monterey, 12.3 and have no smart sync icons in the finder.

This is what dropbox recommended to me:

I have logged out of dropbox, terminated all dropbox processes in the activity monitor, restarted the finder with "exit immediately" and unfortunately have had no success in getting the icons to come back.

Do you have any ideas? 
Thanks in advance