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Submenus on Dropbox application are not working under KDE/Linux.

Hello,

I'm having a problem with submenus on the Dropbox application's submenus on KDE based systems.

I personally use two Debian bookworm installations. One is running XFCE4, and the other is running KDE as their desktop applications. When I right click to the Dropbox application's tray icon, the menu opens as usual. On the KDE system, the submenus for "Snooze notifications" and "Recently changed files" refuse to open. On the XFCE4 system, they work as expected.

This issue is going on for at least a year as of today, so it's not limited to Debian Bookworm release.

Any help will be greatly apprecialted.

Cheers,

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Megan

Hey @Hakan B., let's see what we can find on this together!

Have you checked that the device facing this matches all the criteria as mentioned here? Can you also give me some more details about the device's specifics?

It'd be of great help if you could send any screenshots demonstrating what you just mentioned, so I can have a clear visual of this too.

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there.

Hakan B.

Hello @Megan,

Sorry for the late reply. Here's a rundown of the checklist:

Ubuntu 14.04 or later: Running Debian 11+, which is way newer, and is the foundation for Ubuntu itself.
Glibc 2.19 or later: Running on Glibc 2.33.
The latest Dropbox app for Linux: Running v146.3.4795, which is pretty recent if not latest, and the problem is persistent for some time.
Running on ext4 filesystem (both the daemon and the stored files are on ext4 disks)
I'm running KDE, however:
- GTK 2.24, GLib 2.72, Libappindicator is present.

I'm running both KDE and Dropbox for a very long time (more than a decade), however this problem was not present back then. The situation can be seen from the screenshot below:

Account name is masked for privacy reasons.

Neither Recently Changed Files, nor Snooze Notifications menus present their submenus. Waiting, clicking, double clicking, etc. doesn't produce the submenus that should be present. Other than that Dropbox is working as it should.

Thanks for help again,

Cheers,

Walter

Hey @Hakan B., sorry to jump in here, but it seems that you're running a beta version of our desktop app. Could you see if the issue persists with our latest, stable version found on this page?

Just make sure to toggle off the 'early releases' from your account's settings before moving forward with the reinstall.

If the issue persists, you can try using one of the supported desktop environments.

Hakan B.

Hello @Walter,

Thanks for joining the conversation. I've enabled early releases to get Apple Silicon native builds with new Smart Sync machinery on my MacBook Air M1. On the other hand, I can verify that the issue is not present on a system running XFCE desktop environment I use daily, even with early releases enabled. I'm syncing quite a few systems with my Dropbox account, as you can see.

The problem on KDE is a long living one, present well before I enabled early releases, and worse, it was working before. Both the XFCE and KDE workstations are Debian 11+ systems, running at the very same patch level, almost with same packages. Moreover, at least some parts of the Dropbox application is written with Qt, and KDE is the flagship Qt environment under Linux. As a computer scientist and developer, I find existence of this problem intriguing.

I'll try disabling early releases to test the latest general availability release, but the solution of "just using another DE" is a bit heartbreaking to be honest. Suggestion of binning a decade old installation which contains a lot of personalized workflows and customizations just because a Qt application cannot work under Qt is a bit strange.

On the more technical side, looks like the problem is in system tray integration, because the system tray icon looks different in KDE and XFCE. I'd rather debug the problem with your support rather than changing my favorite DE of 10 years with something completely different.

Walter

Let me know if the issue persists with the latest stable version of the desktop app and we'll take it from there @Hakan B.

Thanks for the detailed report by the way.

Hakan B.

Hello @Walter,

Thanks for your answer, and you're most definitely welcome. I've just downgraded to 145.4.4921, and the problem still persists. The visual is still valid and completely same, so I didn't upload a new screenshot.

Walter

Thanks for keeping me in the loop @Hakan B.

Since this persist on the stable version of the app as well, would it be OK if I send you an email to have a further look into this?

Hakan B.

Hello @Walter,

Of course. It's definitely OK.

Walter

Thanks for your cooperation, Hakan - you've got :envelope:

While I can't make any promises since this is not a supported environment, I'll be more than happy to forward this to our experts for a further review.

Whenever you get the chance, please have a look at your inbox and we'll take it from there.

Hakan B.

Hello @Walter,

And you just had a reply.

No problems, I'm no stranger to software development. On the other hand, system tray being one of the shared standards between environments and systems, I have hope that it's a low hanging fruit and will be one of the bigger and easier wins for the Dropbox for Linux.

Walter

I totally understand, Hakan - thanks for the nudge btw!

I've just replied back to your email, so take a glance at your inbox and we'll pick this up from there.

vjchoe

Hi there - sorry to butt in but is there any update on this? I am also having this issue on my Debian 11 system running KDE Plasma and would love to know if there's a resolution.

Walter

Hey @vjchoe, sorry to hear about this.

Could you please check if this is also occurring on a supported desktop environment from the ones outlined here?

Let us know what you find!

Здравко

@vjchoe wrote:
... and would love to know if there's a resolution.

Hi @vjchoe,

Most probably never (if the issue doesn't resolve itself). This is long term discussion (for many years). Seems Dropbox development inconsistently adds some new "features" and make application work unstable. More than 2 years ago, I posted a complaint for the same. 🤷 My complaint is definitely not the first one! As you already know - no any reaction. 🤦

You may try the 32-bits version.

Good luck... to all of us.

vjchoe

thanks for the heads up @Здравко, it's good to know that this is not being worked on, even if it is a little annoying. the troubles of proprietary software, i suppose 🙂 i had no idea this conversation had been going on for so long!

i will try the 32 bit version though, thank you for the suggestion 🙂

WildPenguin

Hi,

I'm having the same issue (on KDE Plasma).

This is on Arch Linux, and more than meets the minimum requirements, save for the distribution, which is not officially supported. But from the previous posts, gather this is an issue with Dropbox on KDE Plasma regardless of the distribution.

I do hope Dropbox really gets into this. I need dropbox to co-operate with the current group I'm working on, but as soon as I'm not forced to use it, I will choose not to in the current state of the application usability, but seek other alternatives.

Megan

Hi @WildPenguin, I hope you're doing well!

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It's definitely on our radar, and we're keeping an eye out on this.

If anything changes, we'll update this thread. Thanks!