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Forum Discussion
(OS X) Dropbox consuming a lot of CPU whenever any file or folder is changed anywhere
On my OS X 10.9.5 system I'm seeing Dropbox consume CPU whenever anything on the file system changes, regardless of whether the changed files or folders are in the Dropbox synced folders. The CPU usage is proportionate to the rate of file system changes.
When I'm running an installer that takes a long time and has high disk activity (e.g. installing a documenation update in XCode), then the Dropbox CPU usage goes through the roof and I see the Dropbox sync status change from 'up to date' to 'indexing'. For less sustained activities with less intensive file system changes, I see Dropbox just popup briefly in the list of top CPU consumers -- but it shouldn't be showing up at all (or certainly not at double digit CPU use and not for the duration of the file system activity.
My guess is that Dropbox is simply listening for file system events and reacting to each one as if it might be change in a synced file or folder. It should be ignoring fsevents that are for items outside the Dropbox folders -- but it seems not to be the case. :-( :-(
I'm on 3.0.3, but have been seeing this problem since the 2.* days.
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Dave Hein
- It's been 2.5 years and still issues the CPU. I don't use Dropox anymore and they still didn't do anything about it. Don't waste your time people, come to Google Drive, works fine. You wasted 2.5 years on this, don't have anything to do other than fix other company's problematic software? Dropbox clearly doesn't listen to Mac people, it's all about Windows 10 back in the game.
This is a long running (and should be embarrasing) problem for Dropbox. Their tech support staff have no idea how to solve it, that's why they either try and then give up or simply just don't try in the first place. I have no sym links, I'm not sure how many files, but it's about 25Gb of the 1 Tb I pay, ie. bugger all really.
I started with an i7 Windows laptop and do not recall seeing the exceptionally high CPU usage, but that was a long time ago. Moved to an i5 based 2012 Macbook Pro and the CPU usage is pegged at 105%. I thought it might just have been a down market machine, i5 with 8Gb RAM and 1 Tb SSD. To do anything I would constantly have to switch off Dropbox Syncing. So have just bought a refurbished mid-2015 15" Retina 16Gb RAM Macbook Pro (don't get me started on the utterly underwhelming, mid-2016, stupid taskbar, fantastically overpriced, for no real advantage, latest MBP offering, that's an entirely different discussion).
On startup:
- Fans running very fast
- Noise level something I just did not expect
- Heat at base of machine didn't seem too bad
- Looked at CPU usage and, once again, Dropbox is at 105%
Downloaded intel's Power Gadgert and Macs Fan Control.
Intels Power Gadgets shows a constant Temp of around 95-100 deg C
Macs Fan Control shows all 4 CPU Cores between 85-102 deg C
I set the temp sensor to be CPU proximity and memory proximity where the temps are in the 70's (I think this is a beter representation). Intel is obviously getting the temperature from CPU Core 1 (or may be averaging all cores, they do not say).
I stop Dropbox syncing, all 4 cores immediately drop to between 45-58 deg C and the CPU proximity to 45 deg C with the memory proximity the same. I startup syncing again and up the CPU usage and core temps go again. This is really not acceptable, but I've been a Dropbox user for years and a paid subscriber for 5 years. That also includes everyone I collaborate with and share folders (the big problem). So downing tools and switching to Google or iCloud or whatever would not work.
So look Mr Dropbox, pull your fu#$%^&ing fingers out of your collective ar$%^&*holes and find a solution. Even throttling CPU usage to say 50% maximum would be a workaround, but at least DO SOMEHING. This has been an issue for years now not days, weeks or months.
I recently got a bigger SSD on my MacBook Pro wanting to be able to finally have my whole 400GB Dropbox local, but this is proving impossible. The Dropbox process is randomly grinding my laptop to a halt with the fan spinning up full tilt. I've been zipping folders of older stuff to try to reduce the file count (somewhere around 130K files). This sucks.
Additionally it took about five days over my gigabit home network to do LAN Sync. That makes no sense. The whole time it said something like "2 Hours Remaining". Again, with the CPU going 100-150% with the Dropbox process the entire time.
I love Dropbox, but it's really not scaling properly at "pro" level.
