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Forum Discussion
Recent Dropbox - Mac 12.3 Monterey support
The official support page relating to Mac OS Monterey 12.3 Dropbox compatibility is 2 months old now, and Apple just released (April 2022) first beta version of 12.4 and patched 12.3 with 12.3.1, but still no references to current status other than "in late march we will release a beta version...". How can I know is the beta version is now secure or how many days, weeks or months (or years!) do we still need to wait for the final stable release of a 12.3 and up supported version of Dropbox?
- Hi everyone,We wanted to provide an update on availability of full support for macOS 12.5 and higher to more customers. We’re continuing to expand our rollout through May 2023, and anyone interested in receiving this updated experience earlier can join our beta now.If you haven’t already received the update, you can expect it between now and the end of May 2023. We’re also working directly with a small subset of customers with complex configurations to ensure their migration is as seamless as possible.Here’s how you can join our beta:
- Basic, Plus, Professional, and Family plan customers: Turn on early releases and keep an eye out for a notification to opt-in
- Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Education customers: Contact your Account Team or Customer Support for more information
The updated experience is more integrated with macOS and comes with some changes that are consistent with macOS requirements. For more information, please visit our Help Center.Thank you.
Our company is in a similar situation. We have staff members scattered throughout the US, Europe and Asia. Because we have multiple people working on individual files throughout all 24 hours of a day and because we too have folks with the latest MacBooks with tiny SSDs, it's not feasible to have everyone store all their files locally. Ironically, our workflow evolved based on Dropbox's advancements in sharing files stored in the Cloud. We currently have a companywide order not to upgrade Mac OS to 12.3 until Dropbox issues a fix. The fact Dropbox has not updated users on progress to fixing this situation is simply not acceptable. We are exploring options other than Dropbox, but for the sheer sake of convenience, we'd prefer to stay with Dropbox. Dropbox, PLEASE let us know what's going on.
*Bump*
Information please. It's one thing to be late, it's another to be completely silent. I only administer a small number of machines, but I still have the same problem.
Have a look at this beta thread:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-desktop-client-builds/Beta-Build-147-3-4765/td-p/590978
It beggars belief that Dropbox is now non functional due a Mac OS update. How is it that two huge companies can't collaborate on something so important for todays cloud users. I've been reduced to using my old laptop now just to be able to function properly. I look forward to the day when large corporates are held responsible for businesses having to continuously find workarounds and patches because they use actual users to find out the bugs instead of testing the software for a few months before releasing. If Applenotofied Dropbox of this pending change that would affect a large portion of it's users, then shame on Dropbox for not having this sorted. I'd love to invoice Dropbox or Apple for my loss of time (again) when things don't work after some upgrade.
I've just notified Dropbox that I am migrating to OneDrive. We have an Office365 subscription so it makes financial sense anyway, its just that we have been long time DB users so didn't move before. I'm no programmer but if they can make OneDrive, iCloud and CreativeCloud work surely rocket science is not involved?
I will expect a refund as we only recently paid up our subscription... and yes wouldn't it be good to invoice for time and loss of earnings!
keithswd: I thought OneDrive had similar issues with 12.3? Has Microsoft been able to come up with a fix faster than Dropbox? I'd still prefer to stick with Dropbox because of the hassle of moving 10TB of data and ~50 accounts to something else, but this is getting beyond ridiculous that Dropbox isn't saying a word.
This is crippling to any artist who has relied on Dropbox for years. I have over 600 gigs of active working files. Am I honestly supposed to manually download them all, work with them and them copy them back to a platform that doesn't work? Also, why am I paying full price for a utility that no longer provides what it once did?
Does anyone have a suggestion of where to move my files? I am going to cancel Dropbox.
We're in a similar boat, with upwards of 10TB on Dropbox. We're looking for alternative solutions. If it's not bad enough that Dropbox continues not to say anything, they also announced a price hike! That's just nuts.
We postponed updating to Monterey to give time for Dropbox to fix their issue with macOS 12.3 12.4 is well established and 13 Ventura was announced 1 month ago, but Dropbox is still saying "we've got a fix in progress" - rather stretches one's trust in what Dropbox say. If they're not going to fix Dropbox for Monterey they should just say so.
But will it be fixed for Ventura or will it be more of the same?!?
Why is Dropbox silent on this issue?
A. They don't care and stopped working on it weeks ago. But it's a good selling point, so they are still marketing it as a feature.
B. The engineers can't actually hack it, and marketing is too embarrassed to let us know.
Z. {fill in yer own answer}
D. Apple has engineered Monterey to make it impossible to have this feature. Dropbox is using all their resources to argue with Apple which may or may not include threats to sue them as a "monopoly".E. "the pandemic"
Personally, I'm leaning towards D.
I didn't have time to wait for dropbox to fix a problem that has been long overdue. I switched to Google Drive and has been working fine.
Here's a novel idea, instead of focusing on new ideas, how about you fix the old problem with OS 12.3 / 12.4. It' been 6 months, and yet there is no timeline for a fix. Making it real hard for businesses to continue using your product. I need to be able to update my mac (security reasons), but I can't since DropBox doesn't work properly beyond 12.2.1.
What is the status of the Mac release here? Has there been any progress on the 12.3+ support since the admission in February that it doesn't work?
Same **bleep** different day, still broken that I know of. I did notice this week that "transfer" was changed to "send" in my dropdown menu...but to my knowledge a solution to smart sync hasn't been fixed.
yep - the transfer -> send change caused alot of confusion on the team as well - so glad they give good release notes and tell us when stuff changes! <sarcasm>... grr...
- DBXCommunity
Community Manager
Hi everyone,
Thank you for reaching out. We hear your feedback and we’re working hard on this experience.
A public beta for full support of macOS will be available in early Q4. For now, you can still double-click to open files in Finder. Everything else is working as usual.
Your experience on PC devices, dropbox.com, and from the latest iOS and Android apps remains unaffected. You can find more information here [https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/macos-12-monterey-support].
Please ensure you have turned on early releases and once the beta is available to you, you will receive a notification.
Thank you.
DBXCommunity wrote:Hi everyone,
Thank you for reaching out. We hear your feedback and we’re working hard on this experience.
A public beta for full support of macOS will be available in early Q4. For now, you can still double-click to open files in Finder. Everything else is working as usual.
Your experience on PC devices, dropbox.com, and from the latest iOS and Android apps remains unaffected. You can find more information here [https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/macos-12-monterey-support].
Please ensure you have turned on early releases and once the beta is available to you, you will receive a notification.
Thank you.
I assume this response only applies to Business and Teams accounts, because Personal accounts already work fully with 12.3/12.4/12.5 with the current betas, and have for some time. My Dropbox is using the Apple fileproviderd extension and the Dropbox folder is located in ~/Library/CloudStorage/
Dropbox have not made any official statements about different roll out policies for Personal Business and Teams, but there has been the odd hint and most complaints seem to come from Business/Teams users.
Michael,
Try opening an InDesign file (that has un-synced links). Prior to 12.3 it smart sync would load the file and then the file would open after syncing automatically...in 12.3 and beyond nothing happens until you manually sync all the files.
I guess that a non-update-update is better than crickets. Thanks.
Ok, so I am thinking of updating my Mac. Should I go with the supported official version or a beta? If I go with a beta, can I expect to get one that will suffice? I have heard betas do not all roll out to all beta customers at the same time.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey Nousmedis, thanks for your interest in this.
As you know, we are actively working on full support for macOS 12.3 (Monterey).
The private beta version is currently available to select users.
If you are interested in joining, you can turn on early releases, to be notified, when you are eligible. More information can be found here.
Let me know if you have any questions.
For a service that has become so embedded in my (and many other people's) digital working, it is deeply troubling that Dropbox isn't up to speed with Mac updates.... makes me wonder if I should be looking elsewhere for remote storage/sharing.
Thanks for your reply, Hannah. The question is, Mac OS is prompting everyday to upgrade to latest release (12.3.1) for security reasons, but I'm afraid we won't be able to work with Dropbox by manually selecting folders to sync, as we use laptops with reduced storage and rely entirely in Dropbox for our day to day work. So the question is: is secure to use the beta version? what's the schedule for the final version?
PLEASE fix this soon or I'm jumping ship. one of my Macs upgraded to 12.4 automatically and that Mac is now sitting rotting and unused. Yes this is how valuable Dropbox is. So I'm looking at alternatives.
Is VERY disappointing to be subscriber of a premium file management solution and being still waiting for a solution to this issue.
I think that enough time has passed and many of us are considering seriously switching to other service.
I'm VERY DISAPPOINTED. There is no possible workaround to this and my daily work is radically affected.
I've been holding off on updating my OS (Still at 12.2.1), but would like to update to the latest OS (12.4). Is Dropbox up to the task yet? I know there were a lot of warnings out there for 12.3.
- So, Megan from Dropbox support, you’re saying your solution is to link to your colleague Hannah’s post higher up in this same topic? Really? That’s Dropbox’s solution for businesses waiting to upgrade their software and leaving them open to vulnerabilities while they wait for Dropbox to come up with a solution to a problem the company was aware of ahead of time? Well, we are a small company that spends just short of $10,000 on Dropbox each year, but I believe with a solution like that, it’s likely we won’t be spending that money on Dropbox next year.
As I understand it, in macOS Monterey, Apple introduced the File Provider framework which builds "smart sync"-style functionality directly into macOS. Services using this framework most notably end up in the Finder's sidebar rather than syncing files into a folder in your home directory (local copies are stored in ~/Library/CloudStorage, but you're not supposed to care about that). This is modeled after the way iCloud Drive works.
OneDrive quickly adopted this. Dropbox didn't.
There is an app named "Strongsync" which connects to various services, including Dropbox, using the File Provider framework. It runs natively on Intel and M1 Macs. Although I own it (there was a sale), I don't personally use it, but I do use the company's similar product, ExpanDrive on Linux (I'm working on getting off of macOS, but that's a different, related, story), and have used ExpanDrive previously on Mac with good results. If your data is stuck in Dropbox and you need "smart sync" (i.e., all the files synced, but not stored locally taking up disk space), Strongdrive may be a solid replacement for Dropbox's client, and it's not in beta.
I also use OneDrive (two accounts) and iCloud Drive. I've had more sync issues with the other services than I have with Dropbox: duplicating files, issues with "illegal characters" in filenames that I can't change (e.g. because they're in an app's package), file deletions (iCloud Drive), etc. I'm definitely considering moving to OneDrive, since I already have it anyway, but like many in this thread have said, my workflows are based on Dropbox, so moving would be inconvenient (plus I'd have to deal with the stability and filename issues I mentioned).
If you try Strongsync (I think there's a free trial), let us know how it works.
Very sad that Dropbox is basically ignoring MacOS 12.3 and later.
- Seriously?!?!??!? I never thought that Dropbox would have literally NOTHING to say about 12.3+ support to this day. No beta no nothing. We are extremely close to 90 days after the release of 12.3 and will not be able to prevent users from updating. What’s the deal?!
