Why is there no progression bar or percentage when uploading?

[cateyes]

Hello everyone. Yesterday I registered on dropbox and downloaded the desktop version on my mac. I need to upload a video and then send it to a festival so they can download it.

I dragged the video from the external hd where it's stored to the dropbox folder and the synch started fine and is now proceeding, but I don't see a way to check on the progression of the upload, no colored bar or percentage showing anywhere, except for the estimated time left which refers to the uploading speed. Is it me or there is really no way to see how much of the file has been uploaded so far? I'm asking because I unfortunately have a very slow internet connection and I need to send this video to a festival before monday. If I knew that my video is up to, say, 80% then I would wait for dropbox to finish its job, but if I were stuck to a low percentage after many hours then I would definitely need to find another way. Thank you for your time.

[Walter · Accepted solution]

Hey there @cateyes - how are you today?

Syncing your files can take time if you have many or large files. 

You should be seeing a blue icon on the file itself while in the syncing process and, as you mentioned, you'll also get an estimated time on how this process is going to last while you are also able to change your bandwidth settings to improve your upload speed.

I hope this helps!

[cateyes]

Hello Walter, thank you for your reply. Yes, I did change the settings to improve the upload speed and that helped a bit, but still the estimated time on how long it's going to take is based on my provider's upload speed, which changes constantly so one second dropbox tells me that I have 50 minutes left and three seconds later I get 5 hours, then it goes down again, then back up and so on...Obviously dropbox has nothing to do with my connection speed nor my internet provider (can't get anything better in the remote italian village I live in), but I really wish there was another reference to look at, maybe a percentage that shows how far the process is, so that one can organize the work better and decide if it's worth waiting for it to complete or not.  Just my two cents. In the end I was able to get my video on dropbox and share it with the festival so I'm good. Thanks again 🙂

[Walter]

Glad to hear you're all set now @cateyes - thanks for circling back here to let me know too!

All's well that ends well as they say - right?

In any case, I also wanted to thank you for sending along your suggestions and feedback. I’ll be sure to pass this along to the team.

Should you need anything else, just let me know and enjoy the rest of your day!

[icontacked]

This is so sad these programmers nowadays can't even implement a percentage complete for dropbox uploads lol smh

[Tim Lempicki]

I would love more robust information about the status of the sync. Like what files are currently being synced, what percentage of the full sync vs each file, what amount of data full sync vs each file, and a progress bar of each file and full sync.

All of these would let me know Dropbox is actually doing something. The estimated time is all over the place and sometimes it actually isn't doing anything at all or is stuck and you won't know because it doesn't give you an indication of what is going on.

I have a file that says "1 sec" right now and every now and then it goes to "2+ days" and I have no idea if it is actually still uploading anything or not.

I think this is a pretty glaring missing feature still almost two years later and something that is very annoying from a user interface / user experience perspective.

(The web browser version is better in this regard which is very weird. However, the web browser is a lot less convenient for obvious reasons.)

[Walter]

Hi @Tim Lempicki; thanks for joining the discussion here and happy Monday!

I appreciate the time you took to share your thoughts on this; they've been noted in our system. 

As per the matter at hand, I'd like you to try the following steps to see if they improve matters at all for you: 

1. Make sure the Dropbox desktop application is running

2. Click on the Dropbox icon in the system tray/menu bar and then click your profile picture or initials

3. Select 'Preferences'

4. Click on the 'Account' tab, and then click in the window under the tab (just anywhere will do)

5. Hold down the 'alt+H' keys (for Windows) or the 'Option/Alt' key for Macs

6. Click on the 'Fix Hardlinks' button

7. You may be prompted for your a username and password, this is your computer login credentials, not your Dropbox account ones

8. Please wait about ten minutes to see if Dropbox resumes syncing.

If the above steps don’t resolve your issue, please repeat steps 1 to 5, but at step 6, this time click on the “Fix Permissions” button. 

Please note that if you use “Fix Permissions” syncing will start back over. If you need to use this step, please allow for a few hours to pass and let me know if syncing becomes stuck again.

Thanks again Tim!