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Why did the location of my Dropbox folder change?

Today I noticed that right clicking on files in my Dropbox folder (the ones pinned to my Finder sidebar) did not bring up the Dropbox menu options.

After further investigation I realized that Dropbox had moved my entire directory into /Users/library and displays this message, buried within preferences:

This version of macOS requires Dropbox folders to be stored here:

/Users/alex/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox

I received no notice that this was happening. I have no idea when it happened and I have no way to know what version the files in the new directory are. What a mess!

Any advice on how to ensure my files are up to date and if it's safe to delete the old dropbox directory?

Thanks everyone

I'm on v147.2.4724 of the Mac client on a M1 Macbook with Monterey 12.3.1

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Megan

Hey @willit63, welcome to our Community!

Feel free to have a look into this thread, which can answer why this change took place.

If you have any questions, let me know.

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Nancy

Welcome to our Community, @Alex A.!

Just to have a closer look into this, can you please go to the Sync tab of your app’s preferences, and send me a screenshot of what you see there?

Besides that, you should’ve received an email regarding Dropbox and upgrading to macOS 12.3 (if you can’t find it in your inbox, please check your spam folder, as well).

For more details, you can also open this link.

Let me know what you find.

John S.192

nancy, my files are not on dropbox once I uploaded to 12.3.1 some are showing zero kb. but many are not even showing in the folder. Please advise when an update is coming or workaround. Your comment that Dropbox gave notice on 12.2. My mac OS is more important than Dropbox. if there is no fix how to export all my files to GDrive. My hope of course is there is a workaround. I even went on dropbox.com and many of my files and folders were not showing.

John

Alex A.

Thanks Nancy! Please see attached.

My main issue is understanding how to know where the latest version of my files are stored, in this new dropbox directory or in the old one.

Screen Shot 2022-04-14 at 9.09.29 AM.png

voidheart

I am using the latest beta (v147.3.4761) on macOS 12.3.1, but my files are still saved in the old location under the home directory. Why is Dropbox not moving my files to the new location?

Alex A.

HI @Nancy just checking in here thanks

Mikael P.

I have this exact problem. The default location will not work as I don't have enough space on that drive. Why cant we move the dropbox folder to another drive?

splinegear

I have the same issue. My dropbox was stuck syncing and when I logged out and logged back in (to fix this) the location of my Dropbox folder had changed from an external drive to the one shown in the previous messages.

This renders Dropbox non-functional for me since I do not have near enough space on the main drive. I selected Dropbox as a product (over iCloud) in order to address this limitation.

I am now stuck with files on external drive which I am unable to complete synchronizing. This is not good.

Gerald B.5

They messed up royal. I would never have agreed to a move like this. I was not asked and therefore they have violated trust. I am on Monterey 12.5 Beta and DB150.2.4918 when this happened. A monumental cluster!!

splinegear

I have a feeling that Apple is forcing this behavior in order to enable the "virtual drive" functionality since the kernel extensions previously used have been deprecated and Apple has replaced them with the Apple File Providers API.

I'm seeing similar changes in Google Drive for MacOS. (See May 12 update for MacOS users at https://support.google.com/a/answer/7577057?product_name=UnuFlow&hl=en&visit_id=637889557809604833-1648504131&rd=1&src=supportwidget0&hl=en ). The M1 silicon and now Monterey seems to be making some havok in this space. One option that pCloud is taking is to ask users to operate in "Reduce Security" mode in order to enable their solution.

Seems like this is a market share push from Apple in order to keep all other cloud driver providers operating under the same paradigm as iCloud.

Gerald B.5

Thanks for the response @splinegear. The link to the Google Drive post does explain it very well but it still does not excuse Dropbox from not warning about a not insignificant change, describing why it's needed and what immediate options are available (like not upgrading at that time).

splinegear

I totally agree @Gerald B.5 . If you see above it has left me pretty hooped myself.

I reached out to Dropbox support for help in capturing my unsynchronized files. However, my ticket was closed with this response:

> As per our conversation, you requested to receive assistance on an issue you are having with the Dropbox folder location changing on your macOS Monterey from an external to an internal drive.
> After reviewing the issue closely with our specialized team, it seems that the issue you are experiencing occurred due to some changes applied to this version of macOS, which are also affecting the location of your Dropbox folder.
> Furthermore, kindly note that for the time being, we are unfortunately not able to provide a workaround in regards to moving the Dropbox folder back to the old location, however rest assured Dropbox is actively working on full support for macOS 12.3 (Monterey) and higher.

Currently looking for alternative solutions.

Gerald B.5

I am somewhat fortunate. I do have plenty of local drive space. In your case, @splinegear, I would be livid. Over the years, I have had Dropbox on external drives, secondary drives in the machine, even SD Cards in years long gone. This new inflexibility is hugely limiting.

I might start exploring other options if they don't provide some solutions as, I agree, this is a disaster. I have a lot of workflow setup that no longer works with this auto move. I can live without it for now but I am hoping I can recover the files back to where I had them before this "event". Clearly, Dropbox is asleep at the switch or just does not care about their users.

vr_driver

Yep, same here. What a stuff up this is. I only just upgraded DB too, and use a dedicated external drive to support this cloud storage.

Not impressed at all.

DropBox is now completely unusable. I have an SSD with 2TB of storage set aside for the 2TB account on DropBox.

I only have 100GB of space on my MacMini available.

If this can't be solved I'll be seeking a refund.

willit63

Utterly unacceptable Dropbox moved the default location of the local sync folder and removed the option to move the folder to a custom location without adequate notification. Even now, the documentation on this isn't real clear and I've been unable to find a reasonable explanation for why this was done.

What is the benefit of this change? Nothing I've seen so far. Only confusion and workflow disruption.

I may be using Dropbox to sync file between devices, but they're still my files. It's not okay for Dropbox to move them around on my local drive without my consent.

I was actually considering moving to a paid subscription. This incident has eliminated that possibility.

This (along with using the lamest avatars in interweb history) is exactly how great companies fail.

Megan

Hey @willit63, welcome to our Community!

Feel free to have a look into this thread, which can answer why this change took place.

If you have any questions, let me know.

EvModder

This change has broken so much of my workflow, and I have lost numerous files irrecoverably.
This is what finally did it for me; I am leaving Dropbox (and considering doing the same with Apple at my next hardware refresh opportunity).

Megan

Hi @EvModder, I am sorry to hear about that.

When you say that you lost numerous files, would you like to let me know more, in regards to this situation?

Keep me posted!

EvModder

I didn’t realize the change had taken place (because of no notification), and all my stuff referenced file paths in the old location, /User/MyName/Dropbox/.
Files that I deleted from one machine (but expected to still be in the cloud and on other devices) ended up just getting deleted permanently because the folder was no longer syncing. Some of these I had older versions of in the /Library/CloudStorage/ path, but not all, and even for those there appears to be a fair bit of corruption because of the location change. This sort of thing shouldn’t have been done without an explicit popup asking user verification of the change first

Gerald B.5

By the way, I deleted Dropbox entirely from my system (not the files). Rebooted and did a full and detailed reinstall setting my old location then used CLI to change the files location to the old location and voila, back in operation. I just don't understand why Dropbox never asked if I wanted to move my files!! I did not and now all my workflows are restored.

Rich

@Gerald B.5 wrote:
Rebooted and did a full and detailed reinstall setting my old location ... and voila, back in operation.

Keep in mind that doing the full reinstall likely isn't a final solution. Someone else tried that and it worked, but a short time later, Dropbox was prompting them to go through the update again.

I just don't understand why Dropbox never asked if I wanted to move my files!!

You likely missed the notification which included a link to the FAQ about the changes. The short version is that this isn't an option. Dropbox for macOS is being updated to use Apple's File Provider API, which forces the use of the Library/CloudStorage location.

Metasteve

When is someone from Dropbox going to get on this thread and tell us how to reverse this? Drop is going to lose a massive number of customers. Why is that ok? All of my dropbox files are now being managed also mt iCloud. I cannot get rid of the iCloud download icons and some files won't even open.

Release a patch for this ASAP or I will go to Box to there are many other competitors who would never do something like this.

johannes_b

If this is the price for having on demand sync, I'd rather not have it.

I'm perfectly fine with choosing In my preferences which folders to manually sync.

I've started to use a Synology and there you still have the option to opt out of the selective sync.

Since the selective sync doesn't play well with apps that reference other files it's useless to me anyway.

best regards

Johannes

EvModder

For anyone else finding this thread, one potentially workable solution is to create a symlink from `/User/Name/Dropbox` -> `/User/Name/Library/CloudSupport/Dropbox`

I had already given up out of frustration and moved to using OneDrive (we already had a family plan through her, so I can make use of the "free" 1TB), but as previous comments have mentioned this problem is not unique to Dropbox, so I had to set up the symlink for OneDrive as well. Fortunately, my code/buildpaths/etc. don't seem to mind the symlink, and while I was at it I symlinked Mac's Documents, Music, and Pictures photos into OneDrive as well, which has been very helpful.

Note: having tried both OneDrive & Dropbox, I can attest Dropbox is still better from a feature/usability standpoint. If I wasn't on a shared family plan already for OneDrive, I probably wouldn't have switched.