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Dropbox Finder integration breaks Quick Look and thumbnails - Mac OS Mojave 10.14

For the past few months I've been having issues with image previews not loading on my Mac in Quick Look, Finder previews or icon thumbnails. I have experienced the problem on both Mac OS High Sierra and Mojave. My colleagues also seem to be experiencing the same issue.

Screenshot 2018-10-01 at 14.08.04.png I finally took the time this week to figure out what is causing the issue. As far as I can tell the problem is caused by Dropbox Finder integration. As soon as I turned off Dropbox finder integration (and restart the machine) file previews and Quick Look work perfectly.

For now I'm keeping Dropbox Finder integration turned off - I'm a designer and image previews are incredibly useful. I'd prefer to be able to enable Dropbox Finder integration as the sync status icons are useful.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a fix?

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Jay

If anyone else is experiencing this issue still, please could you reach out to our support team directly in order for them to investigate this matter further.

Feel free to attach a link to this thread as well in your email to the team.

Thanks in advance!

All comments

Jay

Hi Andrew, we’re sorry to hear about this.

Are you experiencing this on any file in your Dropbox account? Do you have a private personal account, or are you a member in a Dropbox Business team? Does this apply to both accounts or just one?

Any further info you can provide would be great!

beniherb

I upgraded to Mojave today and had this same problem as you. I found your post while looking for a solution; I tried what you did "turned off dropbox finder integration" and restarted my computer, it fixed the problem.

Just for giggles, I then turned dropbox finder integration back on, and restarted my computer, and Quick Look kept working properly. You should try it to see if it fixes your problem.

twenty3design

Since updating Mac OS to Mojave the quicklook preview and file previews no longer work.

I've tracked down the problem the the DropboxQL.qlgenerator ...if I delete that, then it works better, but not perfectly.

Anyone esle having this problem?

Thanks.

Jay

Hi @twenty3design, I moved your thread here along with other users experiencing the same issue.

twenty3design

Thank you!

drrrrn

I'm having this same issue and have been for about a year now. Can confirm that removing the Dropbox-Finder integration and restarting fixes it completely.

The issue (for me) is not seen on an account level, but rather affects files system-wide - with no icon previews of files on my desktop or in any Finder window (they all default to the generic JPG, PDF, PNG, etc. icons built into macOS) as well as QuickLook not loading previews, either. Note: I do have both a personal and business account connected, and from my testing having one or both connected does not seem to improve or worsen this bug.

Device details: I am having this issue on a 2016 15" MBP running 10.14 Mojave. This is my work laptop and has plenty of processor, memory, SSD storage space, etc. I have a personal 2012 15" MBP running 10.14 Mojave as well - with much less processing power, memory, and a slower HDD - with these same issues, yet when I unistall Dropbox it seems like a much faster machine than my newer work laptop.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance

McPete

I have the exact same problem with a Late 2013 MBP. Turned off Dropbox Finder integration and it fixed the problem. It was driving me nuts. Never realise how much I use Quicklook until it was gone.

Wish I had found this earlier, wasted an hour chatting with Apple support with no fix (realising now it's a Dropbox issue and not an Apple one).

THNKM_01

I have the same problem :upside_down:

Since I upgraded to OS Mojave (10.14 (18A391)) , Finder doesn't load thumbnails of files when I have Dropbox running. The preview is also not displayed.

My iMac: iMac (Retina 5K, 27 ", late 2014)

3,5 GHz Intel Core i5 // 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Soo hard to work with this thing....

THNKM_01

In my case the problem if you have activated this option happens with all files, not just Dropbox. With all of them.

I've also been checking that the CPU usage increases a lot and makes the Mac slow down.

When working with the option disabled, you don't see which files are online and which are not (Working with Intelligent Synchronization). I have a company account and it is very annoying for the day to day.

Do you know a solution?

Captura de pantalla 2018-10-18 09.39.28.png Captura de pantalla 2018-10-17 13.39.00.png

creativum

Same problem here - we have a business account and problem with finder previews at all kind of files. is a big problem for us a a design agengy cause it make processes last a lot longer. is there a solution?

tomrantala

Same problem here!

I disabled Finder integration, restarted computer and it works now. Enabled Finder integration again and it seems to work, for now.

zui

(deleted, issue was different)

spencerjacobs

Same problem. Business Account. It's a real pain in the ass to have to relauch finder all of the time and then try to sync files locally just to preview a simple .jpg!

Please fix Dropbox!

Ozbay

We have this problem as well. As a design agency, this is extremely annoying, since we depend on image previews a lot. And we can't seem to figure out how to fix the problem. Turning Dropbox finder integration off/ on does not always work. This problem occurred after the Mojave update. Any information about how to solve this problem is highly appreciated.

jwvink

Same problem. Business Account. So annoying!

IgorA

I'm just testing Dropbox for business and ran into the same issue. Highly annoying because it affects the whole computer, not only Dropbox files.

Jay

Hi all, just a brief update here.

We’ve received some reports from users that updating to the latest Mojave update, which can be found here, appears to have resolved this.

If any of you get the chance to do so, please let me know if this helps or not!

jwvink

Nope, the Mojave update doesn't fix it . Still annoying thumbnails. So frustrating... I had this problem also with High Sierra.

irishetcher

I'm experiencing the the same thing but it is just JPEGs.

Both quick look and the right preview pane in the Finder just show the spinning loader.

I have seen suggestions on how to fix this including removing the DropboxQL.qlgenerator file from ~/Library/QuickLook. Neither of those locations exist on my install and I checked on an installation with HIgh SIerra. Not there either.

Jay

@jwvink, @irishetcher, would it be okay if we reach out to your email addresses associated with your forum profile in order to investigate this matter further?

jwvink

@Jay no problem. You can contact me. I hope i can help to discover and desolve the problem.

irishetcher

Howdy,

Fixed my problem with the jpegs. It may not have been anything to do with Dropbox or Mojave. I fiddled with some graphics settings in the BIOS and all is good again.

Allyson B.

Same problem here. Tried upgrading to Mojave 10.14.2 and disenabling Finder integration, restarting, enabling Finder integration, restarting - neither resolved the issue. Following this in hopes of a fix soon.

3guk

Hey Guys,

If it's causing you issues you can just delete the dropbox quicklook plugin - sadly this recreates itself each time dropbox is started but you can work around that too:

In terminal use the following commands

rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator

touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator

qlmanage -r

In short, the first command removes the quicklook generator that dropbox installs. The second command creates a new empty file, so that dropbox can't install it's quicklook plugin when it starts up. Then the last command restarts the QuickLook service that creates the thumbnails.

This works perfectly for me, until the dropbox guys can come up with a QLplugin that doesn't cause my system to hang.

matsev

@Jay wrote:
@jwvink, @irishetcher, would it be okay if we reach out to your email addresses associated with your forum profile in order to investigate this matter further?

@Hey @Jay

Is there any final fix to the Quick Look issue? I am managing a design agency of 40 people and we're all hanging there to see if there's a solution from DropBox coming up?

thanks
Matteo

3guk

Matsev, If you use the fix that I mentioned it fixes the issue completely - at least as far as my testing and the other users in my office have found.

James

Jay

Hi @matsev, I don’t have any update on this matter as of yet.

Would it be okay if we reach out to your email address associated with your forum profile to investigate this further?

matsev

Thanks @Jay, that's alright with me. Looking forward to a solution

best

hiimak

I'm having the same issue, have had it for quite some time. I have a business account also. Dropbox - please reach out to my email to help.

@3guk -- may have to try your solution. Thanks!

hiimak

What's the reverse of this should they come up with a solution?