Hello,
I'm a long time Dropbox user, I've run into an issue with my Dropbox desktop application "Syncing 20 files" constantly for the past few weeks, though I've seemingly not changed anything about how I use the app. This is a problem that's already been well documented in the forums for various reasons, so I'll list all of the things I've tried using other forum posts:
MacOS 12.4 (Apple M1)
Dropbox v152.4.4880
- Reinstalling the app
- Checking dropbox.com settings, like
- "Early releases" is off
- "Dropbox system extension" is on
- "Online-only files on Mac" is on
- Checking application settings, like
- "Enable LAN sync" is off
- Bandwidth
- View sync issues (empty)
- Using the advanced functions in the application settings, like
- "Fix permissions"
- "Fix hardlinks"
- Check MacOS Activity Monitor
- Searching Finder for the files that have the blue syncing status icon
- Looking for any file names that have unsupported characters in them
There are about 31k files in the main folder, and no individual file is larger than 1 or 2gb, so nothing out of the ordinary there.
I saw a few posts about file name or file depth / path length, but I would have no idea where to start with diagnosing that, especially because as far as I've seen, all files are synced properly.
When opening up the Dropbox folder, I've Alt-Click to expand and view all files and folders in the drive. I've then slowly scrolled through to view the status of each file and folder (you have to sometimes wait for Dropbox to update that many green checks / blue sync icons). Doing it this way, I couldn't find any file that wasn't either a Green Checkmark or a White Checkmark/Grey Cloud. The only folder that shows a blue sync icon is at the very top level:
All other files and folders look something like this:
While running, the app isn't taking up a relevant amount of CPU doing this, and it continues to sync new and changed files properly... so that's good. This wouldn't even be such an issue except that if I check network activity in the MacOS Activity Monitor, I can see that sometimes (but not always) it's constantly uploading or downloading packets of data, larger than just a few bytes (like 0.5mb every few seconds). Also worth noting that it will never change to below 20, but for example if I add 1 new file, it will briefly say 21, before that new file then syncs and it returns to being stuck at 20.
It may also be worth noting that when first starting the app, it will give a short time estimation to sync the 20 files, which will slowly increase for a few seconds, until it hits 30 or 40s, and then that estimation text will disappear entirely:
Does anybody have any additional suggestions on this? My workaround right now is to select "Pause file sync... Until tomorrow" every morning when I log into my computer.
Is there a way for the support or dev team to do some sort of hard reset on all my files' sync status or something?
Any help would be appreciated, thank you!!
Foster
