Child Item

How can I switch off the checkmark icon?

David G.133

HOW DO YOU TURN OFF THE ICON CHECKMARK

Find more posts tagged with

Setting Up the Apps

Desktop

Sync

Spam

Insightful

Closed - Partially Delivered

Comments

Lusil

Hi there!

Are you by any chance referring to the green circle with a check mark :white_check_mark: that’s on your files in your Dropbox folder? If so, please note that this icon translates as a file or folder that has finished syncing the latest changes and is up to date. These could be changes you made, or changes made by someone you shared the file or folder with.

If I’ve misunderstood your concern, please let me know any additional info or send me a screenshot (excluding personal info) illustrating what you’re seeing so as to have a better understanding.

Cheers!

David G.133

Yes, I like the icons without the checkmark. With the checkmark everything is green.

Lusil

Although there isn’t currently a way to stop the syncing icons from appearing (unless you stop the desktop app from running, in which case, it would stop syncing), could you please elaborate a bit on what it is you’re trying to achieve?

Thanks in advance, @David G.133!

Rich

@Lusil wrote:

... could you please elaborate a bit on what it is you’re trying to achieve?

He doesn't want the green check mark on his files. He wants to turn them off.

@David G.133, that's not currently possible. There is no supported method to remvoe the overlay icons. There are hacks to remove them, but the Dropbox application will just restore them.

David G.133

I took a screen shot but not sure it's attached. The issue is that with the "icon checkmark" it is very hard to see the original icon when viewing files in "detail view mode". All you see is the little green checks icons everywhere. The best example is a word doc file vs an excel xls file. The word file has a blue icon and the excel files have a green icon. With sync files it's all green checks. Why have the icons at all.

When I am in Dropbox I know that 99.9999% of all my files are synced. I only need to know when a file isn't synced.

Lusil

Thanks for the detailed description here, @David G.133.

The desktop app shows these syncing icons to let you know what's happening. If there are no icons, it means that the desktop app isn’t running and as a result, not syncing.

If you have a file that’s not synced, you can tell from the blue icon with the rotating arrows and from the Dropbox icon that’s next to your desktop’s clock which should read syncing.

As @Rich mentions previously, disabling these icons isn’t currently an option, as they play a vital part in the functionality of the Dropbox application. You can find more info about them here.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Dan G.35

Haha - no "likes" on this response...

I fing the checkmarks not only distracting, but on views with dozens of files, they tend to slow to Explorer's refresh significantly. It would be great to be able to turn them off.

DaveMcA

I agree -the position of the green 'tick' obscures the icon behind it. This is a particular problem for Microsoft Office files, where the distinguishing feature is at the bottom left hand side of the icon. Green for excel, blue for work, red for powerpoint, etc. The Dropbox 'tick' hides that part.

Can Dropbox please consider adjusting the tick, for example putting it in the top-right rather than the bottom-left, so it doesn't obscure MS Office file icons so much?

Lusil

Hey @DaveMcA, thanks for sharing this thought with us, I’d be more than happy to pass your comments along to the dev team for future review. :slight_smile:

If you have any other comments you’d like me to forward, please don’t hesitate to get back to us and, in the meantime, have a wonderful day ahead!

linukas

@Lusil wrote:
Hey @DaveMcA, thanks for sharing this thought with us, I’d be more than happy to pass your comments along to the dev team for future review. :slight_smile:

If you have any other comments you’d like me to forward, please don’t hesitate to get back to us and, in the meantime, have a wonderful day ahead!

Maybe it is possible to add setting that it would be possible to adjust that icon size, so you can minimize it to not cover main file icon...

rmajoran

I would agree. The size of the green checkbox is MASSIVE. Dial it down about 75%.

PeterSouthon

Likewise for me - its almost impossible to distinguish a Word document from Excel in MS Explorer - which is where I find my files. Please reduce the size of the overlay, and/or move it to the bottom-right corner or something like that.

IdeaSandbox

+1 for the ability to have a preference to turn off the check icons

+1 for the ability to scale the check icons

+1 for the idea of ONLY having icons for files that are NOT synced.

I use icon preview to find artwork and files, the checkmarks do block the preview. I send screenshots of folders of items and have to quit Dropbox each time I do to hide the check icons.

Please do pass this along to the development team.

bondzinho

I signed in but I could not upvote these comments. I agree, those green checks are massive and distracting. Make them 80% smaller please.

I also agree with all of this here

-----

+1 for the ability to have a preference to turn off the check icons

+1 for the ability to scale the check icons

+1 for the idea of ONLY having icons for files that are NOT synced.

I use icon preview to find artwork and files, the checkmarks do block the preview. I send screenshots of folders of items and have to quit Dropbox each time I do to hide the check icons.

Please do pass this along to the development team.

bondzinho

These green check marks are absurdly intrusive. Please consider some other way to show that a file is synched.

Screen Shot 2019-10-01 at 9.52.11 AM.jpg

k3v1n

If you just want to turn off the large annoying green ticks at specific times (which is what I wanted to do, as I like to take screen shots of a folder full of images when I'm sending instructions to suppliers, and the ticks get in the way) just click the drop box icon down in the taskbar, click your profile icon, and click "pause synching" - the annoying green ticks are removed, until you turn syncing back on.

bounette

Couldnt agree more !

Please pass along to the development team.

My work involves handling image files everyday and the check marks are so intrusive.

Before Smart Sync it was possible to dissable the icons, but not anymore.

Please :

+1 for the ability to have a preference to turn off the check icons

+1 for the ability to scale the check icons

+1 for the idea of ONLY having icons for files that are NOT synced.

Meryemmaya

@David G.133 wrote:
HOW DO YOU TURN OFF THE ICON CHECKMARK

YYZ

I had a working work-around for this issue by making a so-called junction point to the dropbox folder. This is a link to a folder that looks and feels like the folder itself. This served two things: 1) The junction point folder link provides a shorter dropbox folder name (D:\MyFolder instead of e.g. C:\Users\YYZ\Dropbox\MyFolder) 2) NO dropbox sync overlays over the file/folder-icons. HOWEVER SINCE THE LAST DROPBOX UPDATE THE ICON OVERLAY NOW ALSO APPEARS IN THE JUNCTION LINK OF THE FOLDER! So instead of doing something about this issue, they are making it even worse.

alexismac47

The big green checkmark makes it impossible to see photo thumbnails which I (and I'm sure other users) need in their cloud storage. Have there been any updates to this issue? Even making the green check marks much smaller would work. Otherwise, I'm going to have to use a different solution for media files such as photos.

bounette

Hey Drobox Team,

Any new on this issue,

Thank you !

JerSpi

Hi everyone!

The green check mark on every file icon is, of course, not a required, critical or even necessary part of the program. I know this because I've now gotten rid of it. Dropbox still works - Amazing! The great thing is, Dropbox will still tell me if something *isn't* synced, which is actually a really useful shell overlay to have in place.

I'm also not going out on too much of a limb to say that the Dropbox reps on this thread who are feigning confusion of offering to pass this off to the devs as a new feature suggestion are being disingenuous. Dropbox knows a significant minority of their users really dislike the green check. Don't expect them to add disabling the checkmarks to their "new feature" list. They could fix it in 2 hours if they wanted to; they don't.

Fortunately, after quite a bit of searching, I've found a a way around their stubbornness. Nirsoft has a free tool called ShellExView; download it and you can disable the synced file green check shell overlay icon. It will show up as DropboxExt1 Class in the list. You may need to do this after every update.

Oiii

@David G.133 wrote:
HOW DO YOU TURN OFF THE ICON CHECKMARK

mh54

@JerSpi : Thanks for the tip

JB35

I also hate the green check marks. They are just visual noise and very distracting. You used to be able to just rename the icon files and they'd go away, but apparently Dropbox did something to prevent that work around, which is just infuriating.