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High RAM usage on Mac OS

Hello all,

Dropbox user since decades back. I'm on Mac Silicon (M1 laptop, 8GB RAM). Dropbox takes up ≈5GB out of my 8. Obviously a problem, and googling around reveals that this has plagued Dropbox since at least 2021.

I know there are thousands of users suffering from this, and I also know I can restart Dropbox every morning to keep it in check - but I was wondering if anyone actually found a longterm solution?

Data:
MacOS 11.6

8GB RAM

Dropbox version 208.4.5824

Selective Sync on (Only sync about half of my folders)

Amount of files in Dropbox: around 43'000 files&folders

Most folders "online only" (to save HDD space)

Dropbox Badge: off

Symptom:

RAM-usage after a Dropbox restart: ≈600MB. RAM-usage after 7 days: ≈4-6GB. (No major changes to Dropbox content during this period)

Thanks in advance,

/ A

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Comments

Walter

Hey @Andromfisk - thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Could you clarify the location of your Dropbox folder as per the sync tab in the app's preferences?

Also, have you by any chance tried reinstalling the app since you first noticed this issue?

Let us know more and we'll take it from there.

Andromfisk

Hi Walter,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, it's in its default location, /Users/[myname]/Dropbox, as choosen during installtion. (As I'm on BigSur, my machines are not affected by the move to "~/library/CloudStorage" with later OSes).

The machine was recently re-installed (≈6 months ago), but is almost never restarted (hence the memory leak I guess?).

I've noticed this both on this laptop, and my MacBookPro at home (intel, not apple silicon) so as far as I can gather (and based on other posts here) this is not an isolated event - but I'm all for going through the motions. The tedious part with re-installing is that I need to manually write down the Selective Sync-settings, and later go through and enable "make available offline" for a bunch of folders (I wish there was a way to export that list, but then again even better would be to not having to re-install).

Regards,

Megan

Hey @Andromfisk, thanks for the added info!

Do you notice the same behavior when restarting the device, by any chance?

Did you have the chance to have a look at the relevant Help Center article at all? If you've made sure that everything is in check, let me know and we'll have a closer look into this.

Andromfisk

Hi Megan,

I sure did, before writing this post actually. The article mention 300'000 files, and I'm on way less than that - so it doesn't feel like that's the likely cause.

Yes, restarting the computer helps the same way as restarting the Dropbox App helps - but like I wrote initially, I was more looking for a longterm solution.

From two days back I'm screendumping the Activity Monitor (filtered on processes with the word "DROPBOX") to keep tabs on this. By next week I should have a better idea of when it stars to climb up.

Cheers,

Cheers and thanks for reaching out!

Andromfisk

Hello Megan,

I've now screendumped the memory behaviour and it's quite clearly a leak. Every time I restart Dropbox (a couple of times per month) the memory usage goes back to normal levels again.

I think this problem is connected to Big Sur somehow. After upgrading to Sonoma I've continued to check daily, and the memory usage stays more or less the same even after a full week of work.

ZIP with all 27 anonymized snapshots here:

ZIP archive of PNG screenshots from Activity Monitor

Regards,

Andreas

Nancy

Hey @Andromfisk, hope it’s alright if I jump in.

Due to security reasons, we can’t click on any external links here on the forum. Can you attach a few of these screenshots here by clicking on the camera icon in your message box?