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Forum Discussion
Mac OS Ventura - incompatible?
I am a new premium subscriber as of yesterday. I updated to MacOS Ventura on Wednesday. Trying to open the Dropbox desktop app and I receive the error above.
Thanks,
I'm having massive problems as well, on a 2017 iMac running a fresh (disk wipe) install of Ventura 13.2.1. I was finally forced onto the new Dropbox Beta, which I wasn't looking forward to based on the advance reports...and sure enough, everything's broken.
I currently have 2.2TB in my Dropbox and want it to be synced to this new, second machine, with no online-only files—there's more than enough space for everything on the local internal drive—and I believe I've configured this correctly, just as I have many times in the past (though see below). However, while the Dropbox app has been "Updating files..." for many hours, DaisyDisk confirms that there's still virtually nothing on the local drive, even as hidden files. The Dropbox file structure does show up, but there's a "download from cloud" icon next to most files. When I click it, I get a dialog that says "The file couldn't be opened," and the filename itself disappears from the Finder.
The problem originally occurred with the default of every folder checkbox selected under Preferences->Sync. The exact wording leaves room for speculation that maybe we're now supposed to uncheck the directories that we want to have synced locally, so I tried that, but the results were identical, so I switched back. I still haven't managed to access a single file out of that 2.2TB.
I've been using Dropbox for years, but it now appears to be totally useless. I'm anticipating a switch to Microsoft OneDrive, where I've seen no reports of such problems, sooner rather than later.
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi there raffishtenant, sorry to hear about this and thanks for all the information you've shared with us.
Can you please let us know the exact version and the status of the desktop app as shown in your menu bar at the moment?
Any additional information or screenshots would also help!
Hi Walter, thanks for the response! My Dropbox version number is 172.3.7425.
Screenshots are a bit awkward at the moment, since I'm actually working with my partner's account on that machine, but I'm sure I can manage it if we think of ones that would be particularly useful. There's very little to see under the "Sync and backups" or "Activity" tabs. "Activity" shows a grand total of three files, and nothing since yesterday. "Sync and backups" shows a lot more, but only up to about 6 hours ago, which is approximately when I changed from my experiment with having every folder unchecked under Selective Sync to having every folder checked once more. This makes me wonder anew what the appropriate setting is: I would expect checked folders to be synced locally, but the only time it appeared to even be trying was when they were unchecked. However, repeated scans with DaisyDisk continue to say that there is virtually nothing on the local disk—15GB of system files and 50GB of everything else—and that's been true regardless of my sync settings.
The status bar has been stuck on "Updating files..." for these last six hours as well. Before that, it showed a consistently decreasing number of files that I would normally assume were syncing, eventually ending up at something like "Everything is up to date." But at no point was I ever able to access any of those files in the local Dropbox directory at /Users/.../Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox.- Hannah
Sorry to jump in here, raffishtenant.
One of the expected changes of the new Dropbox for macOS app is that files synced down to the computer from other devices or the website, will sync as online-only by default.
This also includes folders that you removed and then added back through the selective sync settings.
So, I would suggest that you allow the application to finish updating the files and once it's "up to date", you can go ahead and select the files you want to have available offline, right-click on them and choose the "make available offline" option to sync them.
You can do the same with the entire Dropbox folder as well, if you want to make all your files available offline.
Ahhh...many thanks, Hannah. No worries about jumping in!
I had totally missed the part about the selective sync settings not taking precedence in these circumstances. It seems...unintuitive? But if that's how it works, that's how it works. Whenever it finishes updating, I'll give it a try and report back.
