Whenever I connect my external drive to my computer while Dropbox is running, Finder freezes.

Question

I am experiencing a severe and persistent issue on my Mac mini M4 running macOS Tahoe (26.5)

The Dropbox desktop application is installed and runs exclusively on my internal hard drive. However, whenever I connect my external 1TB storage SSD drive (a LaCie) to the computer, after a few seconds the macOS Finder freezes, showing the spinning beachball and forcing me to hard reboot or force-quit the processes.

This issue only occurs when the Dropbox application is active and syncing. If Dropbox is completely closed, the external drive works perfectly and the system remains stable.

Any ideas on how to solve this?

Thanks!!!

Nancy · Answer

Hey @Poldino, let me jump in here too real quick.

Can you go to this page and confirm whether you’ve enabled Dropbox backup for your external drive? Feel free to include a screenshot, as well (you can copy and paste it in your reply).

I'd also like to know the total number of files within your local Dropbox folder; you can locate this by right-clicking on it and going to the "Get info" option from the drop-down menu.

Mark · Answer

That sounds like an interesting fault!! Not one I've seen before either, out of interest which version of Dropbox are you running?

I'm running 2.65 Tahoe without issues here.