Dropbox Apple Silicon (M1) install

Yes because a proper product company will probably be buying them soon for small change. Hopefully somebody with a clue.

Rob T.5

No company with enough money to buy Dropbox will have the technical ability to fix Dropbox. (at least in the short-term)

You don’t buy companies based on the short term.

Sorry to go off topic a bit, but I cannot find a way to start a new thread.

So I just configured a new Macbook Pro 16 with the M1 Max chip. I ran Migration Assistant from my old MBPro, but then realized I needed to change my short User name (& therefore the name of my Home folder). I got that done successfully, but Dropbox can't seem to deal with this. It keeps throwing up a message about needing to change permissions for {former name of Home folder} - this is a simple window seeking input of user password, but no option to edit folder name or otherwise tell Dropbox which folder to use. Of course when I enter the password nothing happens, because in fact the old folder name Dropbox cites is long gone from my machine.

I have stripped out all Dropbox-related files from the hard disk, re-downloaded & reinstalled Dropbox, but nothing changes this behavior. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I might fix this? (oh yes, in every other respect this machine is a dream! and no other apps seem to have trouble with the changed User name)

Thanks,

John

Rob T.5

Hey John,

I had the same problem from my migration. Oh, Dropbox... enjoy your inertia!

Here's how I fixed it, requires some terminal time so tread lightly

1. create an alternative admin user

2. reboot

3. login as the alternative user, not your main user

4. open the terminal fix permissions and relocate, depending on which folders are linked. I only linked my Desktop, Documents to Dropbox for auto-backups. You will need to change these commands for your account. If you do not understand, don't run these commands! (readlink Documents is to prevent you from operating on files that are not symlinks)

$ cd /Users/yourusername/Dropbox

$ OLD_TARGET=$(readlink Documents)

$ readlink Documents && sudo chflags -h nouchg Documents

$ readlink Documents && rm Documents

& cp -a $OLD_TARGET ~/

Do this for the remaining symlink folders you need to fix.

5. Log back in as your normal user, setup the backup process again. Make sure to rename your computer before doing this. My new MacBook kept the same name as my old one, so the new Dropbox backup directory was oddly named.

Hi Rob,

Hmm, I think I will need to learn a bit more about the specific references in Terminal before trying this. But thank you very much for this reply.

John

FidarStrange

What did you migrate to?

"What did you migrate to?"

-- I was migrating from OSX Mojave to Monterey. Quite a jump, as it turned out.

I ended up wiping the disk, starting over completely. I discovered that in fact I had not caused the renaming of the Home folder/smaller User Name - that may have been related to my migrating across numerous OSX upgrades.

I solved the Dropbox issue by deleting anything related to Dropbox immediately after creating my boot drive, then changing the 'short name' of my Home folder, and only then re-installing Dropbox. All good now!

sedwards68

Seriously? Yikes. I just received my new 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro and can't get the Dropbox installer to work. I appears I need Rosetta. Come on, Dropbox. Don't drop the ball.

FidarStrange

I am considering getting a new M1 MacBook pro. Rosetta is built in within? If I read you well, you need to install rosetta to be able to access dropbox

As for Rosetta, it's my understanding that it's included in the OS (Monterey, in this case). Some apps need it, but I thought the first time you try to open one, it would stop & ask to use it?

Anyway, here's a clue - Photoshop 2021 on my mac has a checkbox in the Get Info dialog for selecting "Open using Rosetta". I enabled it and now Rosetta seems to be available for any app that needs it. Maybe look for an app (doesn't have to be Photoshop) with that checkbox available?

Good luck, and enjoy your new Mac!

John

hearty1565

I recently bought a M1 MacBook Air and tried installing drop box but couldn't. After checking whether I could found that dropbox still isn't compatible so now I have to move else where. I had 2 dropboxes and aim to drop both. I can't believe that dropbox has totally ignored the M1 fraternity. Sometime in 2002 just doesn't cut it for me.

Richard Hart former Dropbox user.

Hmm, my experience is different. Dropbox runs fine on my 16-in MacBook Pro (M1 Max chip), as well as my older Macs. The only negative is the 3-machine limit (somehow in years past, this didn't apply?).

I did need to get the current Dropbox installer to make sure a silicon-Mac-compatible version got installed on my new MacBook Pro, though.

Give it a try before you give up...

John

over_promise_over_deliver

It should run on an M1 we have it running on an M1 and an M1 pro. It works through Rosetta and is the worst piece of software I regularly use.

Dropbox works on M1. Problem is that it eats memory.

over_promise_over_deliver

it runs on M1, thats not the issue. It's how it runs that is what the problem is.

Michael B.10

Silicon version has been released to some beta users:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-desktop-client-builds/Beta-Build-140-3-1852/m-p/568901#M6623

I am one of the lucky ones.

No problem with it so far, but I never had a problem with running in Rosetta either.

You never noticed it was the biggest resource hog?

How I wish there was a decent alternative to this shower of **bleep**.

Michael B.10

@enrvuk wrote:
You never noticed it was the biggest resource hog?

No, and it wasn't for lack of looking.

I get that Dropbox does not support Apple Silicon Macs AKA M1 Macs. Is there any list of what works and what doesn't work? I reorganized some folders on my MacBook Pro M1 and those changes just don't sync, meaning they don't show up when I log into dropbox.com and they don't show up on my old MBP.

Some people seem to be able to open the Dropbox desktop app using Rosetta, but I can't open it at all.

I had been accessing my DB folders through Finder, but if syncing is hit or miss, I'm concerned I'm going to lose or damage critical files.

Any idea what is safe?

Hannah

Hey @xmarc999, thanks for posting on our Community.

At the moment, indeed, the Dropbox app should work with Rosetta. Are you having this issue while using it that way?

Do you have a Dropbox icon in your menu bar, that can give us some info on the sync status of the app?

Are you perhaps getting any error messages?

Keep me posted!

In researching this further, a lot came up.

First, my setup: macOS Monterey
Version 12.1
MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021)
Chip Apple M1 Max
Memory 32 GB

Despite being in my Login Items, Dropbox was not consistently starting at boot. Re-booted into Safe Mode and manually started Dropbox. *Now* I got a login window. So likely was not fully logged in before for whatever reason. Logged in. Went through System Preferences and made sure Dropbox had all the access it needed (at least one access was turned off in Security and Privacy). Restarted in normal mode.

Dropbox icon in menu bar now badged with numbers. Status shows several thousand updates pending (!). Let it sync.

Logged into Dropbox via web. Online view now shows updated files and folder organization.

So it looks like DB was in some odd state which was causing problems at startup. Everything now seems to work as I need it.

Thanks for pinging me on this.

Jericho

Look into StrongSync from ExpanDrive. It seems to work fine on my new Apple silicon MacBook Pro Max. Just installed it a few days ago. Access to DropBox is a little different through StrongSync, but it gets me there.

Thanks for the tip, Jericho. I think using Migration Assistant to move over from Big Sur/Intel to Monterey/Apple Silicon did not do justice to DB. If I had it to do over again, I think I would have deleted DB completely and reinstalled it.

Kudos to StrongSync for being the first to implement Apple's File Provider extension. And for their new support for DB. Having said that, I'm not fully sure what its functions are. I'll have to look into it; I have started to look into Expandrive also

Jericho

I am under the impression that ExpanDrive does not work with Apple silicon.

iTechnology

is there a way to download the M! version rather than the default version and changing the setting for early release?