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Removing the Dropbox folder from Cloudstorage

Following a restore from backup (after a ventura update bricked my laptop) I stupidly agreed to move my Dropbox to ~/Library/Cloudstorage/Dropbox. The restore messed up icloud syncing and apple support had me remove dropbox. I've verified that the Dropbox file provider is no longer present, Dropbox not running etc. I can access my files fine in the CloudStorage directory but I'm taking the opportunity to tidy things but macos still thinks that these files are managed by Dropbox. For example, I can't move the Dropbox directory out of CloudStorage, doing so using the command line results in a permission denied error. Moving a directory results in a timeout error on the command line, or a 'waiting to download' error in the finder. This makes me believe that macos still thinks that Dropbox is managing this folder even though I've removed it. Does anyone know how to get macos to 'forget' that Dropbox was every managing this directory or that Dropbox was ever installed? Thanks!

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Comments

Rich

@cosmosnicolaou wrote:
Moving a directory results in a timeout error on the command line, or a 'waiting to download' error in the finder.

Were the files fully downloaded to the local drive when you removed Dropbox, or were they flagged as Online-only (where the local file is just an alias to the online file)? The default for the new macOS update of Dropbox is that all files sync as Online-only.

cosmosnicolaou

the files were restored from backup and I set dropbox to maintain a local copy - i.e. not online-only.

Jay

Hi @cosmosnicolaou, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Just to clarify, is the Dropbox desktop application fully uninstalled from your machine? Have you followed these steps in the advanced reinstallation (without the reinstall portion) to remove it from your computer?

cosmosnicolaou

I followed the instructions to quit the app, and then remove it from the applications folder. I did not find the article you link to, but I do not have a .dropbox folder anymore, nor is there anything Library/Dropbox. Since the File Provider transition occurred, there is no ~/Dropbox folder. Rather my files are all in Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox. I can access those files, but as I said in my original note I can't move anything out of it as macos thinks they are still managed by Dropbox.

Jay

If you're seeing the Dropbox folder in CloudStorage, then it's possible that somehow, part of the app is still installed on your machine, which is preventing the deletion of the folder.

cosmosnicolaou

Yes, but what is that part that's still installed?