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30 TopicsNative macOS Dropbox App vs. Maestral
I stopped using the native Dropbox app a couple years ago because it was so resource intensive. I've been using Maestral since to view and sync my Dropbox content due to lighter footprint. I have a M3 MBP with 36 GB memory, running macOS 15.1 (Sequoia). Any feedback with use of current native Dropbox app? Happy with use and performance? Thank you.25Views0likes0CommentsOld Laptop with Old Dropbox-- how do I transfer files?
Hello Hive Mind! I recently fired up my old laptop (OSX 10.9.5, late 2009) and I cannot transfer files off of it. I have tried gmail, messages, airdrop, apple mail application, old flash drive... the works. Then I noticed that I had an Dropbox icon. It has Dropbox v1.1.35 and had my hotmail email as the account. It looks like it is working on the old laptop, and I uploaded a 253 KB .png file. However, when I go to my current laptop, and log into the browser Dropbox, it appears that I had to make an account with the same hotmail address. And I cannot find my files in the browser Dropbox. 1) Is v1.1.35 hopelessly outdated and should I just give up? 2) Do you have any suggestions about how to transfer these files off of my old machine?856Views0likes3CommentsHow do admins of orgs using Dropbox for Business support end users with syncing issues?
This is a general question for admins in organizations using Dropbox for Business. How do you support users who are having Dropbox syncing issues on Windows endpoints? I have been creating a screen sharing session where I can investigate syncing issues on the endpoint. It seems to me that Dropbox for Business is missing some kind of telemetry from endpoints that gives status on sync health back to the admin console. Something that reported back every 15mins would be better than flying blind. I would even take a log file saved into the AppData folder that logged sync status when it wasn't "finished". It seems like a reasonable feature.1.5KViews0likes6CommentsDropbox Free - desktop, docs, pictures sync across devices
Hi folks, years ago, I could install dropbox on three of my devices, turn on desktop backup and what not, and my icons would appear on the desktop of all three devices. Just like onedrive. But these days, I can't seem to see the option. Sure, I can enable backups of desktop/pictures/documents, but all this seems to do, is create different folders within the dropbox section of file explorer. So I get PC1, PC2 and PC3, and all the folders in there. I don't want this though. For a start, it's difficult to work out which device is which. Has the feature I need been removed, and only available in "paid for" plans now? Thanks in advance!358Views0likes1CommentRemove "available offline" in finder under folders and files
Hello, Does anyone know a way to remove the “available offline” phrase in Finder under files and folders? First of all, the phrase seems completely useless considering it can be there along with the cloud icon that indicates that a file/folder is not actually offline but needs to be downloaded to be opened. Second, this useless phrase takes away the ability to show item info in Finder. I used to be able to see the number of files in a folder, the resolution of a photo, or the file size (if it’s an archive), but for some reason, Dropbox thinks that “available offline” is more useful than that. I am surprised I could not find anything on this. It seems like I am the only one concerned with this issue. Maybe there is a simple toggle somewhere in the settings that I am missing. Unfortunately, today I found out that your files can be marked “available offline” but still be in the cloud, and that is a deal-breaker for me. However, my annual subscription just renewed, so I’d like to find out how to remove this annoying “available offline” phrase and see my file/folder info until I find a replacement.462Views0likes2CommentsHow to fix being stuck on Indexing forever loop of death on multi million file DBs after db crash
Ok so I've used Dropbox for almost as long as its existed and recently due to frustration with the never finishing indexing bug I was forced to find out why this kept happening so I could prevent it. Bear with me on this long post but trust me its worth it, what I found was mind blowing and game changing. So our business Dropbox is more than 9 million files strong, I've noticed REALISTICALLY any machine handling over 2 million will just enter an indexing loop at some point from which it will never recover, after its happened 5 times in the last week I was pissed enough to that I decided I was going to find out why this is happening, I know I'm pushing the limits but we've had machines with 2.5m files running fine for years, why some work fine and some don't was a mystery, one I was determined to find out. When you add stuff to your Dropbox, Dropbox has to index it so it can know what to do with it. If you add "too much stuff" (copying 200,000 files of small size in one go, coders know what I'm talking about) or do it "too fast" (changing access permissions on 1.5 million files located within Dropbox in one go in less than 5 minutes) on a computer with too many files (1-2+m) this causes Dropbox to start indexing them all at once causing the system to slow to a crawl however if you don't let Dropbox finish before doing something else (like adding more files or using the computer for other tasks) or someone else adds a bunch of files on another machine its almost for sure going to cause Dropbox to crash and restart during this process (it happens quite frequently), this crashing and restarting triggers a full reindexing of the ENTIRE database, ALL files, and since the machine is already trying to download or upload some of the new files while trying to reindex the current millions of files, doing both at once overtaxes it, which causes it to crash, and were back to square one with the infinite indexing crash loop. This kept happening to us all the time, the only solution was to unlink and relink the Dropbox account so all pending changes were lost, we got a bunch of conflicted copies and spent days sorting out the mess. So I figured I needed to see what was going on with Dropbox, what it was doing when it was "indexing" to find out what was causing the crashes. So after looking for a while I found using Microsoft's sysinternals process monitor (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon) configured in a certain way allowed me to look at EXACTLY what dropbox was doing and I found out all I just told you and another very important piece of info. (if you want to see how awesome it looks in action check out THIS video:) When you click PAUSE FILE SYNCING you would think Dropbox pauses and ceases all operations, but you are wrong!, it pauses all incoming and outgoing transfers but any INDEXING tasks keep going! This is an absolute game changer! now if I see a machine that says "Indexing" for a long time, I turn on the process monitor, hit pause on the file syncing and watch as the machine does the indexing at super high speed (5-10 times faster than doing it while downloading), it usually finishes doing the full file reindexing in a couple of minutes once its done I can hit back resume and keep going, I've never had the app crash while doing this "offline" or "paused" indexing, thus avoiding the inevitable crash, and reindex loop. I have been successful in recovering 4 machines from the indexing loop of death using this method, where before I was screwed and had to eat the duplicate files and cleanup for a week and a TON of annoyed users in the office. Basically if your machine is taking too long indexing or is stuck indexing after a crash just hit "pause for 1 hour" and forget about it, it will still be working on the indexing in the background, and when it restarts it should have finished the re-index avoiding a crash when trying to download/upload the new files. Id wish Dropbox would have told us this, I never expected it to keep indexing while paused, I assumed pause was PAUSE, as in, cease all operations, it would have saved me so many headaches. All they need to do now is let us have a "log viewer" or something so we can tell when its done doing its thing and we can hit resume, also show us, even when in pause, when its indexing and when its not, so when its done we know we can restart it safely, or the better yet, set it to where if Dropbox has to index a large volume of files (say over 100), it will automatically pause all other disk operations until the indexing is complete, then restart the downloads, trying to do both does not work, i know you want it to but it just doesn't, and just causes the whole thing to explode non stop in a loop of death, maybe enable this on a setting somewhere? or auto enable it on machines with over 500k files? something has to be able to be done. TLDR: If your Dropbox is stuck indexing, hit pause 30 mins, and let it do its thing until its done, it will keep on doing it even when paused, you wont know if its doing anything or working unless you use procmon, but its working, and try avoid using the hard drive or the machine until its done, (usually less than 30 mins), and your indexing/crashing problem will be fixed. Message to Dropbox: Dear Dropbox, Please give us a way to view this info without having to resort to third party programs, this way we can help auto troubleshoot our Dropbox issues and take a lot of load off your customer service guys. Something like: Enabling a setting somewhere saying "activate/enable troubleshoot/server mode" or something that allows us to turn on an always shown (ALWAYS, NOT ONLY WHEN MOUSE OVER, BUT ALWAYS!!!) 3 tab little window, containing: Indexing files. (with a current list of the exact files being indexed and their speed (x files per sec)/paths) Downloading Files.(with a current list of the exact files being downloaded and their speed/paths) Uploading Files(with a current list of the exact files being uploaded and their speed/paths) There's another issue with slow uploads due to Dropbox connections stuck in a "stagnant state" (force closing the TCP socket connection using netmon restarts the download/upload and speed goes back up again) but that's another problem for another time. I hope this was helpful to some other sysadmin and sorry for the long message but it needed explaining.28KViews11likes12CommentsArch Linux Dropbox Gnome app indicator drop down menu
I use Arch Linux as well as many other Linux flavors. Often on Arch with Gnome desktop I had trouble getting the Dropbox drop down menu to look and perform properly. I searched the Internet but really found nothing addressing my problem. I actually gave up on it for a few months. While trying to correct another problem with the app indicator panel I installedlibappindicator-gtk3. It solved the other problem I was working on but I got an added bonus in that the Dropbox drop down menu suddenly started working perfectly as it does on Linux Mint Cinnamon, Debian Gnome and MX Linux Xfce. So just a tip if the Dropbox drop down menu is not performing properly on Arch Linux Gnome, try installinglibappindicator-gtk3 from the Arch repositories. It is in the Arch official extra repository. I think it's possible that this solution could also help on any Arch based distro such as Manjaro,EndeavourOS, etc. if the Dropbox drop down menu doesn't look or perform correctly. I also had the same problem on Fedora Gnome but I don't currently have a free test partition to try this with Fedora.2.2KViews0likes2CommentsSync ETA and incoming syncs feature removed by Dropbox - Any workarounds to make the app usable?
Keen to hear any tips/tricks/workarounds to make Dropbox usable again after all the recent downgrades: Someone at Dropbox finally confrimed that the ETA on sync files has been intentionally removed from the service. Incoming syncs also disappeared entirely last year. So the desktop app is now just an events list of outgoing files and only live info is a vague visual progeress bar. What a downgrade! The app was always a bit quirky and vague but with these core features removed, I'm trying to figure out how to actually share anything in an active work environment. Made feature requests of course, but since support tickets only get cut-n-paste responses and the core features were apparentlyremoved intentionally, I'm guessing Dropbox isn't planning to bring back full service any time soon. Wondered if anyone in the community has any workarounds to make Dropbox usable again: Maybe plugins, 3rd party tools, or ways to get the previous UI+features back? Alternatively, curious to hear: How do you use Dropbox without being able to see incoming syncs and ETAs? Naturally, now looking into moving to another platform but some clients will innevitably stick with Dropbox out of familiarity so I hope to find a way to keep it as a workable option. Thanks kindly!1.3KViews0likes4CommentsHow to free up space with online and offline file options
Storing and saving your files is important, and making sure your files are available where you need them can help with that. So, let’s figure out if you need to have your files available online or offline. Why should I make my Dropbox files available offline? Whatever device you’re using with Dropbox, whether it’s a computer, tablet, or phone, you can make your files and folders available offline. This is similar to downloading your files, except it also keeps them in Dropbox. This way, your files are saved offline on your device as well as online in your Dropbox account. So, whether you’re on the move, or you have wifi that drops, you can make your files available offline and keep on working. While you’re offline, changes made to your offline files won’t “sync”. This means that the changes you make offline won’t sync between your offline device and everywhere else you access your files in Dropbox. Once you are back online, Dropbox will sync the changes you made to your offline files everywhere you access them in Dropbox. How do I make files available offline? The short version of it is, within your Dropbox folder in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac), find the file you’re looking for and right-click on it, and then simply choose Make available offline. Easy! For more info, you can head over here. What are Dropbox online-only files? As the name suggests, these files are available only when you’re online. Since this frees up space on your computer or your hard drive, it is the perfect option if your laptop is at capacity, but you still want to access your files. If you set a file or folder to online-only, you’ll still see the file or folder in the Dropbox folder on your computer, but it’s just a placeholder. You can only open it if you’re connected to internet. Dropbox removes it from your computer’s hard drive, so that it only takes up space in your Dropbox account online. How to make a file or folder online-only: To set a file or folder to online-only manually: Open File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac). Open the Dropbox folder. Right-click the file or folder you’d like to set to online-only. Under Quick Actions, click Make online-only. If you’d like to save your file or folder back to your computer’s hard drive, repeat this step and click Make available offline. So, now you know the difference between online-only and offline files and when each one might suit better. So, why not look at your files and folders and see if you can free up some space? Do you separate your files depending on where and when you need them?8.5KViews3likes1Comment