Dropbox app on Macbook Pro M1 using high RAM.

Question

Hi

Dropbox is running considerably high RAM, and has done for some time. By looking at the forum it seems to be a constant problem - what can I do to reduce this? It is by far the most RAM intensive application i use.

I'm using :
Macbook Pro M1 - 16GB RAM
Sonoma 14.5
Dropbox App v202.4.5551
7% of Dropbox allocation (25TB) used
140,907,808,938 bytes (140.52 GB on disk) for 70,683 items

Generally sync's a handful of files per day, maybe a few hundred MB unless something is out of the ordinary. Most of the data is cloud storage (selective sync).

DB typically runs at over 500mb of Memory and about the same for VM Compressed memory (after reboot and general usage). When monitoring all app usage with browser (multiple windows and tabs) DB is close to double the RAM usage.

What can be done to fix/improve this?

Thanks

paulmalc · Answer

Thanks.

For the benefit of anyone else with this issue, support asked me to do delete the DB app and remove all the remnants via terminal, which I did.

I then shared screenshots of before and after, without any other apps running that I would normally use on a daily basis - and had just rebooted. The system monitor was showing that the RAM usage had increased from about 500Mb to about 700 to 800Mb.

Support then handed me to next level up support, who basically said that even though the combined RAM usage of 1.7GB, the Mac was using the RAM effectively.

I have now shared additional screenshots of activity monitor showing that, using the support team calculations, that when I am using the Mac with other apps in a regular situation, at random times during a 3 day period with multiple apps running, that DB was running at 1.7Gb of std memory and 1.6Gb of Compressed memory, totalling 3.3Gb. I also did a screenshot of CPU usage at the same time, showing that DB is using 1.2% of CPU, with less files to sync than I had previously, and all files up to date. (138,312,802,021 bytes (137.95 GB on disk) for 67,257 items, so about 3GB and 3,000 files no longer req'd to sync)

Basically DB is using 21% of the RAM while doing nothing, and this is operating as expected.

I suggest there is something drastically wrong here.

Does anyone else have this problem, or a solution?

Thanks

Nancy · Answer

Hey @paulmalc. Hope it’s alright if I jump in.

I was looking into our system and I can see you’ve been in touch with our support team about this. I’ve attached your convo here in the same email thread, so that they can see what you’ve already mentioned on the forum.

I can see you’ve replied to their latest email, so they’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

paulmalc · Answer

Hi - the syncing is up to date. As I mentioned before, there are very few adjustments to the files each day.

This has been going on for about a year but really sick of it now.

Before someone sends me the this article (https://help.dropbox.com/installs/high-cpu-usage) again, it is RAM, not CPU, and even though there are 75k files that may be sync'd which is well below the reported 300k files that suggests RAM impact.

Appreciate this being solved.

Thanks