A few days ago I installed the new dropbox update after being prompted to do so. It's been a nightmare since then. After all my folders were moved to some new secure folder on my mac, I get nothing but weird issues with dropbox and finder * Finder freezes and can't save a file. Need to kill the process in activity monitor * Can't open files through Finder. Need to kill the process in activity monitor * Dropbox sometimes can be opened but doesn't start. Need to restart None of these issues occur if I quit dropbox, but once I start dropbox again, it's nothing but headache. I'm on a Mac M1 Venture 13.3.1 and Dropbox v173.3.6706 If this persists one more day I'm uninstalling and cancelling my account. Have been a loyal dropbox user for over a decade but this is not worth the headache.

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Multiplers Errors with Finder after Dropbox Upgrade - Mac M1

A few days ago I installed the new dropbox update after being prompted to do so.

It's been a nightmare since then. After all my folders were moved to some new secure folder on my mac, I get nothing but weird issues with dropbox and finder

Finder freezes and can't save a file. Need to kill the process in activity monitor
Can't open files through Finder. Need to kill the process in activity monitor
Dropbox sometimes can be opened but doesn't start. Need to restart

None of these issues occur if I quit dropbox, but once I start dropbox again, it's nothing but headache.

I'm on a Mac M1 Venture 13.3.1 and Dropbox v173.3.6706

If this persists one more day I'm uninstalling and cancelling my account. Have been a loyal dropbox user for over a decade but this is not worth the headache.

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cquintero1

Just wanted to give an update here. After 5 days of pain and errors the problem seems to have resolved itself.

I'm not sure what dropbox was doing in the background this whole time....at one point Dropbox used up my entire hard drive space and I only had 1 gb of free space left. Then, suddenly, it stopped and I had 50gb+ free again and I could suddenly open files without errors again.

Dropbox is still very slow to start (seems to hang on "updating files" for a long time) but it does now start consistently.

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Megan

Hi @cquintero1, sorry to hear about that!

In the issues you mentioned, you also said that Dropbox sometimes doesn't start. Do you get any specific error messages?

As for all the Finder problems you mentioned, do you notice this behavior only for your Dropbox files and folders, or all of your content locally?

Let me know more!

cquintero1

Just wanted to give an update here. After 5 days of pain and errors the problem seems to have resolved itself.

Dropbox is still very slow to start (seems to hang on "updating files" for a long time) but it does now start consistently.

mike1234

I am having the same or a very similar issue. I cannot open files without MacOS finder freezing. Have restarted multiple times and issue has repeated. Now Dropbox will not start. I'm running MacOS 13.4. Please help.

Jay

Hi @mike1234, could you clarify exactly what happens when you try to load the Dropbox desktop application? What is the status of the app in the menu bar when you click it?

This will help me to assist further!

mike1234

Hi Jay, thanks for the response. Here is the loop I'm in. In order to regain functionality of Finder so I could get any work done yesterday, I removed Dropbox from the "Open at Login" list and restarted my computer. When I open the Dropbox desktop application, I first receive a message that it has been added to "Open at Login" and the Dropbox icon appears in the menu bar. When I click it, it is stuck in a loop that says "Starting..." and the icon remains gray in its unconnected state. If I attempt to access any local files in Dropbox, Finder freezes and I'm unable to open any file. If I attempt to restart the computer and allow Dropbox to load at login, it gets stuck in the same place with the same result. The only way to get out of the doom loop is to quit Dropbox, remove it from autologin, force quit Finder, restart my computer, and now I've been moving the files I want to use out of the Dropbox location on my computer just in case so I can work with it. Note I have Firewall turned off in settings per an earlier post and that has not changed the outcome. Let me know if you have other recommendations to try.

mike1234

One more thing I forgot to mention. Even if I quit Dropbox and restart my computer, I'm unable to open or move any locally stored files from the Dropbox location without Finder freezing. I am currently downloading files from the web and creating separate local versions so I can continue to work.

Jay

Have you tried reinstalling the Dropbox desktop application, without uninstalling it first, using this link?

mike1234

Just tried that and no luck, still getting hung up in "Starting..."

Jay

Thanks for the info, in order to look into this matter in more detail, would it be possible to reach out to the email associated with your forum profile?

mike1234

You bet.

Jeremy Buff

I’m also having this issue, but for me it’s a 2023 Mac Mini with the M2 Pro chip. I have tried numerous things, such as deleting the Finder plist so it would rebuild, booting into recovery and running first aid on the volumes, trying safe mode, and even running fsck. Most concerning of all, I even reinstalled macOS from recovery (without formatting the drive) — which did not solve the issue. There’s clearly something on the user account level that gets messed up or corrupted.

Even relaunching Finder doesn’t work for me. Using Activity Monitor, quitting everything I can find for Dropbox doesn’t work. I have to prevent Dropbox from launching at startup in order to access Finder at all.

However, an interesting wrinkle here. If I launch Dropbox after removing it from the startup items, it takes several minutes to start up. About 10 actually. Once it starts up, and if I did not try and open Finder during that time, I can open Finder about 10% of the time without any problems. The rest if the time it freezes.

Another interesting note. During one of the times where I was able to get Finder open, I attempted to re-order Dropbox in the Finder sidebar. That immediately froze Finder and nothing at all would fix it — not reboots or anything else. I had to fully wipe my Mac.

I think there are two problems at play here. One has to do with launching dropbox, possibly when associated with launching dropbox at start up. The second is something with the sidebar went re-ordering the finder item.

mrozelle

I was about to make a separate forum post, but I am so glad to have found someone else suffering the same problem. Restores my sanity a bit.

A few days ago I updated Dropbox to version 175.4.5569, and since then it has been running extremely slowly on my 2021 M1 MacBook Pro (running MacOS Ventura 13.4). Before updating, I did not have any problems with the app. Whilst Dropbox isn't displaying any error messages, it says that its status is "syncing...", and it has been like this for days, ever since finishing the migration and re-indexing. When I check "sync history" to see what is being synced, there are no unexpected files, and they all appear to have finished syncing (each file has been "added" already). Perhaps because Dropbox is doing all this mysterious syncing in the background, files that are only available online take an unbearably long time to download (to the point that the computer sometimes gives up trying after a few minutes and just says "[file] could not be opened"). Note also that these are not large files - my computer failed to open a small text file stored online this morning. My download and upload rates are both unlimited, and I'm on very fast wifi. In the last 24 hours, the Finder application is crashing on launch, as described by other users in this thread.

This is a massive problem for me, as I work collaboratively in a shared Dropbox folder with my colleagues. I can't really work without access to those files, and I'm desperately trying to find a fix.

I have tried several solutions suggested for similar problems in other threads, without success:

Fixing hardlinks
Fixing permissions
Restarting the computer several times

mike1234

Quick update in case it's helpful, as I seem to be back up and running. After experiencing an increasing frequency of completely new, strange bugs and issues that came on right after the big upgrade and persisted/worsened even after uninstalling Dropbox (Finder freezing, Microsoft apps freezing when trying to open files elsewhere on my computer, trying to Save As in an existing open file, etc etc.) and waiting all day for next steps from submitted ticket, I decided to try uninstalling and reinstalling again since I've already lost a ton of time due to this debacle.

Attempt #1 failed - Dropbox would not start up ("Couldn't start Dropbox. This may be a temporary error.")

Attempt #2 went further - Dropbox loaded and I logged in, but when given the option at install to quit and move files or relink, I chose quit and move files and after restarting the app, received the same error message as attempt #1 and could never get back in.

Attempt #3 seems to have worked in restoring previous version of Dropbox, and when it encouraged me to upgrade to the latest, I obviously declined. This may be luck or voodoo magic, or a behind the scenes enabling of installing the pre-upgrade version of the desktop app, but here's the sequence I went in (from memory so may not have it perfect... needless to say didn't expect to have success and was ready to give up):

- Uninstalled Dropbox

- Moved entire Dropbox folder out of cloud storage or its existing location to Desktop

- Deleted any remaining Dropbox system files I saw (in Users folder I believe, perhaps Cloud storage)

- Reinstalled Dropbox via https://www.dropbox.com/install

- Relinked account

- When Dropbox loaded and encouraged upgrade, I did not

- Chose cloud only due to insufficient hard drive space, and then went through and synced folders I wanted locally... obviously not ideal to have to resync everything again but mysterious bugs and Finder freezing have not recurred in last few hours of work.

Best of luck to fellow sufferers. This was a doozy and may have taken a year or two off my life.