You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Syncing icons on the files in the Dropbox folder have changed
Hello The Finder Extension Icons indicating whether a file or folder is Online Only or Available Offline are showing up in my Finder, however, the statuses are incorrect. For instance a folder that ...
Hello,
I find the new Icon Setup useless.
I suggest to bring it back as it was before the Update.
I think the most important thing is to be able to know if there's a SYNCHED LOCAL File in a Folder, that is eaten your Local HD Space.
So the Grey Icon was super useful before the Icons Update. It showed that there were no SYNCHED file in the Folder.
Now the Grey Icon shows me if there ìs at least one Online-only file in the folder, but olso if there anything else (Synched full green, or Half green file in the folder). It's Basically useless... because the important thing is to know if there's some file left that weight on Local HD.
The best solution was that GREY Icon tells me that there is NO LOCAL SYNCHED file in the folder, so I know that the files inside that folder is Only on CLOUD, since the most important thind is managind and knowing witha a glance if there's some Local file in a folder.
Now I dont know at first glance if I have some local file in every folders... i have to open all the folders and look inside. Thant's vary bad Update.
Is there any chance to make it back as it was the Synch system?
Thank you
Agreed. The new system is unbelievably useless and will force my company to move to another cloud client if dropbox can’t put it back how it was.
Who at Dropbox came up with this?
For synced files, we need to see
—Folders fully online only
—Folders mixed online/local
—Folders fully local
That’s how it was and it was very effective. the new system is just nuts and I cannot understand why they did this. Planning to move company elsewhere
Dropbox staff made it pretty clear to me that they don't have plans to change it back -- at least that's how I took it when I asked if they were considering going back and how soon that decision might be made because my plan renewal was coming up, and they responded by giving me the link with directions for closing my account!
I wasted the entire afternoon checking out Onedrive. Don't do it. Icons are basically the same as the new Dropbox ones, but without the weird opened by another app stuff. And they have lots of options for handling versioning.
But if you want to be able to share files between computers Onedrive automatically grabs your doc, photos, and desktop folders on your C drive and moves them into Onedrive! It says you can stop it from doing that, but it took mine anyway when I went back in to check it. And if you try to take them out of Onedrive and put them back where they belong, it deletes them. It deletes your original photos. And if they were saved to the cloud or still syncing, it permanently deletes them. (Nice, huh?) I lost almost all my desktop links and a bunch of preset, title, and other files from photo and editing programs. Mostly stuff that can be replaced because I keep my actual working catalogues elsewhere, but really irritating and will probably take many more hours to restore to fully working order. (Why editing programs stick catalogues, presets, and templates in "photos" on the C drive -- a drive I don't use, so don't include in my backup -- is a separate issue.) I never actually got the sharing function to work either, but I think I know what the issue was.
So now I'm p*ssed off at both Dropbox and Onedrive. Maybe I'll just go back to using portable SSDsfor big stuff like I used to do. Dropbox used to work pretty well - it had syncing issues, but I could easily see where it screwed up before and straighten it out. Now it's almost impossible with my deep file structure.
Anyway, despite the pricing and the fact that Onedrive seems like a a good replacement, I'd avoid it unless you want to just let it load whatever it wants or are starting completely fresh and can set up a file structure that really restricts what it automatically grabs.
I've got three more options to check before my Dropbox plan is up for renewal. I'll let you all know if I find anything that works well. And I'd love some recommendations.
I totally agree with you, the new icon system is bad and causing me a ton of previously unnecessary frustration. It's so hard now to free up space. The new updated icon categorization makes it impossible to know what folders have offlined files buried within them. I generally love Dropbox—and literally it was the old icon system that made smart-sync so incredible/streamlined/useful and had me signing Dropbox's praises to anyone that would listen. But, this new update is just so bad... it seems to have solved a problem that didn't exist, while creating a much worse problem that makes working with Dropbox so incredibly painful now. As we speak I need to clear up disk space, yet I'm faced with hundreds of folders that all now show the cloud icon (despite some of them having offlined files buried within)... so now to find where offlined files might be, I have to search through thousands of subfolders and dig through every last level to get to every individual file. Before, that whole process happened in a split second, simply by looking at the root folder's icon.
Dropbox, thank you for making a great product that really does make the work I do possible, but please revert back to the previous/better icon categorizing system. Please.
You are right.
I dont know if this site is User only... But I hope that someone in dropbox can Read this and Understand that the did a very bad Update this time... and it could be the reason to change service... at least for me, I'm wasting my time looking for Local files and Oflline them.Agreed. If they don't revert back to the previous icon system I might have to find another service for my company to use.
Yeah, hopefully Dropbox monitors this and takes note. When I contacted Dropbox help, it was them who pointed me to this forum, saying it was monitored by Dropbox and the best way to communicate issues/feature requests.
There's a longer thread about this issue over here, if anyone is interested to comment there:
Dropbox recently changed (aka ruined) the usability of its formerly-useful Smart Sync finder icons.
CLOUD ICON - this icon used to show up when a folder was 100% online-only. Very useful - you could see that a folder was there, and not eating up local drive space. But now it means only that "any little part" of a folder is online-only. This ruins its usefulness, because if I’m trying to clear up hard-drive space, I can’t tell which Cloud folders are the “offending” ones that may secretly possess a gigantic file, deep inside a folder, that is eating up tons of local drive space. With this Dropbox icon change, the only way to make sure you are freeing up hard drive space is to constantly throw your *entire* Dropbox into online-only mode. It makes the whole system kind of useless.WHITE WITH GREEN CHECK ICON - the white-styled green check icon used to represent folders that were a mixture of online-only and locally-downloaded. This was useful, because you could quickly see folders that might contain downloaded files, and navigate to downloaded or cloud-only files. But the new version of the white/green icon only tells me if an App has opened a file, instead of me choosing to download it. Basically a waste, not useful, and confusing as it functionally double-up with the fully-green checkmark icon described below.DARK GREEN CHECK ICON - this dark green icon remains effective because it's clear: it means a file or folder is in the cloud AND is also fully downloaded to your computer.If people want more icon options, Dropbox should make more icons. But to kill off the effective old icons and re-define them in a useless way is bad for businesses that manage a lot of media. It will force my business to move to another cloud service if it's not fixed.This shouldn't even be an issue -- it NEVER SHOULD HAVE CHANGED.
Marking a folder online only when just one file is online only makes Dropbox too cumbersome to be very useful anymore. I don't have time to go scrolling around to see what I have available on my computer and what isn't.
I've already started looking for a replacement in case this isn't fixed by the time my subscription renews.
Hello,
What surprises me the most is that someone at Dropbox proposed this 'good' idea and the rest of the staff or the people who decide go ahead with it. Nobody inside questioned why, nor the advantage for its users?
Let's make this update because it will improve the user experience and help them do something (which no one can explain)... instead, let's deliver a 'concept version' of what Smart Sync would be.
Totally agree this change pretty much stops dropbox being an effective cloud based file system. I can no longer easily manage my folders and see what is online/offline. Baffling why this would be changed. Please revert to the old icon system. Likely to leave Dropbox for another service as its ability to work smoothly between offline/online was its main selling point for me.
