How to Clear or Remove the Recent file list in mobile apps

I find your abuse of privileges to censor bizar considering your silly  claim you are like other users. Who asked you to keep removing inconvenient posts??? Dropbox buddies of you?

William S.

^Makes some valid points Rich R.

You should be supporting us but no....

Irrespective of the status of this forum, surely as Dropbox are effectively hosting it, they would take an interest on what is being discussed?

To suggest that forum users should not expect Dropbox to take note of any suggestions, criticisms or other observations is very strange especially as I've just forked out the equivalent of 99 dollars just three weeks ago.

People who take the trouble to read and post here are obviously keenly interested in the subject and wish to share their observations. Hence, surely it is in Dropbox's interest to keep an eye on the forum. In particular my fellow posters are people who have actively supported the company by spending money and have developed a relationship with and dependence on it.

Sadly, it looks like that relationship is in danger of foundering on the rocks when just a short explanation from Dropbox as to why they introduced a 'facility' that many of us find appalling and what they intend to do about the situation we find ourselves in. After all it wasn't us that changed the program but we do seem to be in the 'take it or leave it' situation.

Many other companies have introduced 'improvements' to programs but where they have not suited everyone have given the option to disable it, that's all it needs and then we can get on with using Dropbox as we bought it, not as someone else thinks we must have it.

Now for that cold shower . . . . . . .

After following this forum topic for months and continuously searching online for any updates on this issue, it has become clear that the reason Dropbox devs have yet to address this easily fixable issue (option to clear or disable "Recents" or designate custom landing page in mobile Dropbox app) is because this so-called "feature" must have been the brainchild of some exec whose ego is too big to admit that they made a mistake.

Users are smart enough to organize and access their directories/subdirectories, and there are reasons why we organize our storage in our own ways. While it may seem logical to have recent files easily accessible, most of us would like the option of sorting our files by access/modification time/date RATHER THAN BEING FORCED TO NAVIGATE THROUGH RECENT FILES AS THE DEFAULT (UNMODIFIABLE) LOADING PAGE! The Dropbox browser UI is less offensive as the landing page is still the "Files" tab with our home directory that we have organized FOR OUR OWN REASONS. ("Recents" is shown only when the tab is selected.) However, whether on browser, desktop, or mobile, users would like to be able to clear the "Recents" list for various reason, but most simply BECAUSE WE WANT TO.

Dropbox's lack of acknowledgement of the many user complaints is a sign that they refuse to see that their implementation of the "Recents" feature is TERRIBLE. With the many cloud storage alternatives (eg Google Drive 15G and iCloud 4G free!), why should we continue to support a company that is too busy to monitor and address user comments in their forums? I and seemingly many others have waited months for a fix (which should be simple since the functionalities to load into home directory or last used directory existed before the "Recents" rollout), but it has come time to switch. Dropbox, though you were once a user friendly, customer driven, "indie"-hip company, you are now a sinking ship whose execs are too egotistical to admit their mistakes, and your market share is sure to drop.

Dropbox has become the most bizarre program I have ever seen. I pay for $99.00 X 5 but certainly would not have if I had known that they were so capable of screwing the pooch on something as simple as making their program totally unusable for a large segment of the users. I have been changing all my dropbox files over to Onedrive to see if that will work better, but have noted in some of the posts that Google has a similar option. I don't know if either Google or Microsoft will be a better program, but at this point they certainly cannot be any worse. I hate to lose the money, and make the people I pay for the extra space, change over to another program, but I am better off losing the money as opposed to having to jump through the hoops dropbox wants me too.

Does anybody know who is responsible for the decisions at dropbox? It appears from the amount of complaints and lack of responses that whoever it  is must be in deep hiding because I have never purchased a program that refuses to at least try to justify the erroneous decisions they made regarding a programming problem. I maybe have not got it changed but at least they had the decency to justify their thinking.

Relative to Rich!! He probably escaped from Mom's basement or the individual responsible for the massive screw-up, because NOBODY can be dumb enough to make excuses and wrong headed statements such as HE?? has.

Per Wendy's suggestion, " Open the plist file in the editor of your choice" I searched for but do not find anything like that in my Windows 10 machine. Any suggestions as to where it might be found? I don't know if that will help the problem with dropbox but am willing to at least find out.

I meant to ask what is the equivalent in Windows 10 as googling it is inconclusive 

@Robert H., As you've probably gathered from your own searches:

• The plist file is specific to Mac iOS/OSX. (Seems that plists are also used with Apple software on Windows PC eg. iTunes).

• To edit the plist file (which should be text) use a text editor of your choice.

• Wendy's instructions are likely specific to Dropbox for Mac.

Poking around on Dropbox on Windows 7, I see that every time I open Dropbox, the following folders update:

• %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\instance_db\

• %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\instance1\

The files within these directories seem to be .DB and .DBX which may be readable with SQLite (I have not tested). I suspect the "recently changed" file list that may be equivalent to the plist that Wendy suggested to edit is stored in:

• %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\instance1\UPDATED_XXXX ##where XXXX is some letters that changes each time it syncs

Again I have not managed to open any of the files. Deleting the filecache.dbx  forces a "hash check"-like behavior (resyncs your entire Dropbox). Deleting UPDATED_XXXX seems to delay the "recently changed" file list from displaying (both on my Desktop and Android phone). But both of these files are recreated and the Recents eventually pop back up. These are likely downloaded from Dropbox server. If anyone pokes around and has more info or paths specific to Windows 10, please share with Robert H.

Now although this thread has "Apple mobile apps" in the title, it seems that forum moderators are redirecting everyone here for concerns about the "Recents" default loading page for Andriod as well. If you are on Android or have a mobile device that supports widgets, this solution from Dropbox support (Ralph) posted recently by Corey A. may work to load directly into a folder of your choice:

• https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/205698686-disable-Dropbox-recents-feature

Here is his pasted post:

Mike C et al,

Thanks for posting that. Whilst it doesn't get rid of recents it provides a good way to avoid its inherent problems.

One word, don't use a well stocked folder for Dropbox to land on 'cos it will take forever to download each time you open it up. I've made an empty folder called 'launch', being somewhat old fashioned.

The only thing worse than pedantic moderation is personal attacks on the moderator. Sad to see almost every discussion on the entire net sink to this level, instead of just discussing the issue.

Since I'm well into moving to Sync (sync.com) and saving $50 per year, I'm going to see if I can stop notifications for this thread. I wish the rest of you good luck.