Child Item

Switched to Mac File Provider API version (174.4.5852) - now continually "syncing 6 files"

Hi! Hope someone can help me. Amongst the many problems with the new Mac FPAPI version, this one is a deal-breaker and I can't seen to figure out what's going on...

My otherwise idle system cycles between "Your files are up to date" and "Syncing 6 Files" every few seconds. Indeed, it seems to be syncing *something* (and consuming modest network bandwidth) but does not list any recent files in Sync history or Activity tabs.

This behavior seems to be new with the FPAPI version and is happening on all of my dropbox machines...

Has anyone else seen this?
Is there any way to get the actual filenames of what dropbox is syncing?
or, perhaps someone can point me to a Mac FP API utility to report file system changes?

I'm stumped! Thanks so much for any help!

Find more posts tagged with

Desktop

Mac

Dropbox Basic

Insightful

Accepted answers

All comments

Megan

Hey @ehahn9, let's jump right into this!

Can you let me know if you see any specific numbers when you hover your mouse over your little Dropbox icon, on your menu bar, next to your WiFi?

What do you see on the bottom of the pop-up window, when you then click on the icon?

Also, if you click the Dropbox icon, and then click your avatar (profile picture or initials) in the upper-right corner, do you see any syncing issues under "View sync issues"?

Keep me posted!

ehahn9

At the bottom, only "Syncing 6 files..." then "All files are up to date" then syncing 6 files a minute or so later.

I've also fixed hyperlinks and permissionI

I've rebooted the machine

I've disconnected dropbox from the account and re-connected

Seems to randomly occur and when it does, it's continual.

From my OP: is there a way to know *which* files dropbox is syncing (internally)?

felip

Same here but stuck indexing 49.199 files. Nothing works log out, log in restarts indexing but it gets stuck after a while, on another random number. Rebooting does nothing. Same Dropbox version 174.4.5852 MacOS 12.6.6, and don't tell my to upgrade to Ventura please just make your product work as expected, I lost a lot of precious time this weekend trying to make it work, now I'm uploading files through Safari LOL but I just need to keep working.

Walter

Hey there @ehahn9 & @felip - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Could you maybe send us a screenshot of the app's exact status and version as shown in your menu bar at the moment? Is it still syncing the exact same number of files?

felip

No it is not, every time I sign out and in it gets stuck in a different number. I also tried to reinstall Dropbox, problem is that I relay on Dropbox for work and I can't stay all day testing things. I have two accounts basic with no issues and advanced which is hard used all day for work (10 people team) stuck indexing and not syncing 😕 since updating to new file provider API app last week. I'm using Dropbox through Safari.

Guys , with all the love, but this is a very bad update and it's funny because it is not beta, I'm not in the beta program. I've been reading a lot this days and we're not alone, (a lot of people is having sync/index problems since file provider update) and don't blame Apple, iCloud works flawless, (I have it for my personal files). During the week I don't want to loose more free time trying to solve it, please don't tell me to update to Ventura, don't tell me is a file, some team members doesn't have the problem in the same OS, with the same files in Dropbox. The only difference is I'm on M1 Machine and they in Intel, (I don't know if this is a clue but is the only difference). Just try to isolate the problem, correct it and launch an update. Customers don't have to waste their time even being so proactive that want to solve it by themselves, (like some of us). Thank you

Captura de Pantalla 2023-05-29 a las 14.26.12.png

Yesterday

Captura de Pantalla 2023-05-30 a las 7.37.49.png

Today

EDIT: You'll see a Sandisk icon here, Dropbox is not on external drive, it's were is supposed to be now library/CloudStorage/Dropbox

Thanks

Hannah

While we appreciate your feedback here, @felip, indeed the next step in order to resolve this issue, would be upgrading to Ventura, particularly 13.3 and above.

I understand this is not convenient for you, but is it possible?

Of course your comments will be passed along to our team about this as well.

felip

"While we appreciate your feedback here, @felip, indeed the next step in order to resolve this issue, would be upgrading to Ventura, particularly 13.3 and above." Not very helpful @Hannah 😕 and I'm also a customer and I'm not trolling a thread, I'm just having the same problem and thought would be better than making another thread.

No it is not possible at this moment to upgrade a working machine, time is gold, and Monterey is still having updates... I don't understand why you can't solve it since Monterrey is using exactly the same File Provider API, so you can't do nothing? How is possible that others in my team are in Monterey and not having the same problem? This means you're only giving support to very last OS? Ventura is arriving to its end... WWDC is here and MacOS 14 is coming in fall, Ventura will be out then? So many questions, don't you think?

I mean, I could understand not having support for super old OS but... well I'll look into a better assistance through our Advanced plan support.

I'm so disappointed with this poor response 😞

Ben38

The correct response is a path this person can take to downgrade to the working version of DropBox on their system. Your new software is beta-quality at best and I've seen people with LOTS of issues with it.

alitchfi

Yes. I had to do that because the upgrade wrecked my file system and resulted in corrupted and unreadable databases. The Dropbox file system changed the data format of the databases. It looked like Dropbox had unlinked or corrupted the File System Object. In any case, potentially 30 years of data lost. Luckily I had backups prior to the update and could rebuild the systems on localhost.

I cycled through many service desk staff who only copied and pasted solutions, even after I had said not to post solution x, y, and z. Finally got the escalation I demanded after weeks of wasted effort and spoke to an actual person, only to be told the "engineers" were working on it. Yet the same problems are emerging, so apparently there were no bug fixes in subsequent releases.

Downgrade to an earlier system and *do not use* the backup function.

Or better yet, transfer to another and more reliable storage service, as I am doing.

felip

Thanks for your comment, after seeking help here with no luck I wasted a Saturday morning to make a complete uninstall and clean and downgraded to 177.4.5399 Dropbox which works flawless. For me the problem is they launched this to all Mac users (Monterey included) knowing it just doesn't work and it is a beta stage app at its best.

Will never trust again a Dropbox update announce, my confidence in the app is bellow minimum right now, it's sad because I used to love the service and we use the Advanced plan in a small team of 11 people. I really hope they can solve this but launching a critical update without testing it in Monterey which is the previous version of current Mac OS is out of all logic and not professional by any means.

And the solution given in this forum pretty meh 😕

felip

Thank you, that's what I did but with the help of users, one Saturday morning wasted.

matteosecli

Same here, spent all morning trying to figure out why my files were not syncing properly even though Dropbox was syncing "something" all times. The new File Provider API update is terrible; Dropbox is there syncing stuff all times (I know don't what, exactly), sometimes doesn't even start up unless I kill every Dropbox process and restart, "fileproviderd" is running over 100% CPU all times, other apps that access Dropbox files are broken (for example, MATLAB got stuck at startup until I granted full disk access to both MATLAB and Drobox and I set up a startup folder in an "available offline" Dropbox folder)... I heavily rely on Dropbox for work, and yesterday I couldn't get any work done for at least 3 hours, until my Dropbox finally decided to kinda start working...

bigzarelli

The new file provider version of Dropbox is trash. I need to move my Dropbox folder to a new drive as I now need to sync more files. M1 Mac... guess what, I can't upgrade my hard drive. It's about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

And the upgrade process caused my Mac to have a fit of the vapours as, rather than move the files, you duplicated everything. Cue hours of late-night diagnosis of what was happening.

I want to downgrade so I can move my Dropbox folder and sync to an external drive. How do I do this? Or, if not, what alternatives are there to Dropbox? I already use Backblaze for a different purpose.

Tired of trying to resolve this, only to find out what the changes were... that, frankly, upon reflection, were pretty much forced upon me without any indication of the downsides of making the upgrade. I'm now not a happy long-time Dropbox customer; I signed up as a paid customer on 18th March 2011, and up until this update, Dropbox has never got in my way.

Seamless my ass.

razorflash

I don't understand this

always conflicts

always random whole 300 000 files reindex

always losing files

why ? You could have just told us it's not stable 😞