Child Item

Electron framework in the desktop app leading to MacOS Tahoe slowdowns

Application Affected

Dropbox
Device

Mac
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)

macOS 26
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)

234.3.5480

Question or Issue

Recent discussions have identified an issue with the electron framework leading to significant slowdowns in Mac OS 26 (Tahoe).

You can see a good description of the problem here: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/09/30/electron-apps-causing-system-wide-lag-on-tahoe/

And this page offers scripts to identify apps that use the _cornerMask to draw drop shadows for windows in Electron apps (which triggers the slowdowns through WindowServer): https://gist.github.com/tkafka/e3eb63a5ec448e9be6701bfd1f1b1e58#file-detect-electron-apps-with-macos-lag-sh

I played around with he scripts and it looks like Dropbox 234.3.5480 is one of the affected Electron apps…

I'd be great to tweak the embedded framework (or use one of the newer, corrected frameworks) to eliminate the issue in Dropbox :-)

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Mac

Insightful

Accepted answers

Neal

Hi everyone!

Thank you for your patience, ir's much appreciated.

I can confirm that a fix for this issue is now live in our most up to date stable build, 235.4.5905.

Can you all try updating and then test your performance and letting me know how you get on?

All comments

Jay

Hi @cortig, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

We appreciate the feedback on this matter in relation to the Dropbox desktop application slowing down a Mac OS device running Tahoe.
We take all comments and reports into consideration when improving the Dropbox app and services.

LegendofJuli

Any update on this regarding MacOS tahoe slowdowns?

Walter

Hey @LegendofJuli - can you let us know if you notice those slowdowns on the latest, stable version of the Dropbox desktop app?

Any additional information is more than welcome!

Robert R.73

@Walter jumping in here...I still see these slowdowns on 26.0.1, and I am assuming it's dropbox because the other Electron framework apps I use have all been updated to the latest Electron framework.

There is a small chance it could be another app about which I'm unaware, but I believe 234.4.5591 is still not using Electron's most recent framework. Can you confirm one way or the other?

Neal

Hi everyone!

Thank you for letting us know about this. I can confirm our team is aware of this and will be rolling out a fix very soon. I'll monitor the situation and let you know as soon as there is an update.

ghutchis

It would be great to get a fix soon. I literally cannot use Dropbox on my M4 laptop because I experience huge slowdowns on open / save dialogs whenever it's running. It's night and day. If Dropbox is running = huge lag. No Dropbox = fast.

Neal

Hi everyone!

Thank you for your patience, ir's much appreciated.

I can confirm that a fix for this issue is now live in our most up to date stable build, 235.4.5905.

Can you all try updating and then test your performance and letting me know how you get on?

postnumbers

Hi Neal,

Thanks for responding. I don't believe that 235.4.5905 fixes the issue.

Looking forward to the fix.

Sascha F.

I can confirm, that the new version is NOT fixing the issue with Electron Apps.

Looking forward to the fix.

Neal

Hi @postnumbers,

Thanks for responding! I just wanted to clear something up. It looks like you're checking this using Furbo.

That tool looks up what version of Electron we're using and infers from the version that our app will cause the Tahoe performance issue, but we patched our Electron fork to address the issue, so even though we're on an older version we won't actually cause the performance regression.

Unfortunately some detection tools only look at the Electron version. The "Shamelectron" website actually looks at the contents of the app, for the specific piece of code that causes the issue, which is why it marks Dropbox as OK

If you check on https://avarayr.github.io/shamelectron/ you'll see that we have in fact fixed this issue.

However if you find that stopping & running Dropbox does impact your performance that is a different story and please let me know if this is the case.

postnumbers

Hi Neal,

Thanks for your reply. I’m monitoring the status of this topic as I’ve held off on installing macOS 26 until Dropbox’s issue related to Electron running under macOS 26 is resolved. I’ve used the tool I’ve provided a screenshot from to determine this. Maybe it’s based on an incorrect assumption.

In view of this, I defer to others to provide feedback based on actual usage.

I have no reason to expect that your team hasn’t resolved the issue, Neal. I’m just cautious, knowing the lost hours/days that rolling back the OS can take.

Thanks again.

Neal

That is absolutely more than fair @postnumbers!

Better to be safe than sorry, I completely understand! Well hopefully in the meantime, some other users can weigh in on this to let us know their experience.

Have you noticed any issues @cortig?

Neal

Hi @Sascha F.,

Just wanted to direct your attention to my reply to @postnumbers in case this clears things up for you as well. Unless you're noticing any actual performance issues.

cortig

Everything seems fine for me with Dropbox 236.3.5800.

I also use this script that searches for cornermask specifically inside the Electron frameworks and Dropbox now seems OK.

Neal

Thank you so much for confirming @cortig!

And I'm glad to hear that there's no issues!