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Forum Discussion
High memory usage on Mac M1
Hi,
I've just installed my first M1 iMAC and entered the Dropbox beta program.
I need to add that I run an Intel base MB Pro in parallel and I've entered the beta program there as well.
So far everything went fine, Dropbox runs Apple nativ and functionality is as expected (well known from the past).
Checking memory usage on the M1 Mac made me wondering. 7,4GByte!!
After rebooting the machine it came down to 750Mbyte but nearly a day later its up again to 1,5Gbyte and is constantly increasing.
On the Intel MB Pro, everything fine and smooth. Memory consumption around 700Mbyte & constant.
Does anyone experience similar memory issues on M1 MAC's?
Issue was resolved.
Many thx to the Dropbox support team!
Root cause:
- a faulty, external USB hard-disc which was configured for a Dropbox backup. Actually, this drive seemed to work properly but unmount/mounted themself periodically.
I noticed that the DropboxFileProvider on my Mac is using over 20GB of memory. It is the same on my several Macs. These Macs all use Apple Silicon chips and run the latest macOS (Sonoma 14.0), with at least 16GB of physical memory.
This also leads to high memory pressure on my macOS even when no other applications are running.
Is this expected behavior? Is there any way to reduce Dropbox's memory usage?
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Sorry to hear about this, ZeroClover.
Can you take a look at this article with all the possible reasons this might be happening and let me know if it helps?
I have been having this memory leak problem for months on macOS. I just quit Dropbox (again) after it was hogging 30+GB of memory. I do not have more than 300,000 files in the Dropbox folder, and I have contacted support directly without resolution (issues just get marked as solved).
Issue was resolved.
Many thx to the Dropbox support team!
Root cause:
- a faulty, external USB hard-disc which was configured for a Dropbox backup. Actually, this drive seemed to work properly but unmount/mounted themself periodically.
I don't have a faulty external drive. The memory leak is real, not a hardware issue, it's a coding issue. Currently using 9GB ram.
@hgz How did it go for you so far? I am currently getting 31GB+ Dropbox memory usage on a brand new Mac Studio Ultra 64GB ram. It's forcing it to use 4.5GB disk cache, wearing my SSD... Not to mention the CPU 100%. It is uploading a ton of files at the moment, but still...
Hi goBiGGER
unfortunately my memory (leak) issue still exists and I need to kill & restart the Dropbox process every 3 days.
Dropbox support was very kind and proactive so far and we ran through all possible user actions like re-indexing, checking security settings on the Dropbox folder (btw Apple Silicon machines need full access) and so on. As said, unfortunately the issue still exists and as far as I understood support, they will forward it now to engineering. I would assume that your experiences will help engineering identifying the root cause as well.
KR
Hans-Georg
did the same, restarted and that got it down to 2.9GB at the moment. But I suspect if I leave it on another week or two it will get large again... A memory leak by the looks of it...
Hi Walter,
I run on both machines OS 13.0.1.
Desktop App Status - beta up&running, no syncs ongoing e.g. all data in sync.
Version:
KR
Hans-Georg
- Megan
Hi hgz, sorry to jump in here!
Can you access your account settings, and turn Early releases off? After that, install one of the stable builds of the Dropbox application, and let me know if the behavior remains the same.
