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Upload app sync speed is very slow on macOS.

TWISTY

macOS: Sonoma 14.6.1

Dropbox desktop App, auto update is on, currently v209.4.3661

Dropbox Advanced - 310TB

Speed Test: 110Mbps Download/24Mbps Upload

Been using dropbox for 10+ years with no problems.

Last two weeks upload speed has become painfully slow on my desktop.
Download speed is fine.

I have read through a few threads and tried the following.

- Custom Bandwidth Settings is disabled

- Custom Proxy settings is disabled

- Removed NordVPN

What else do you suggest?

Thank you so much for your help.
Twist

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TWISTY

I might've fixed it.
I logged out of dropbox then uninstalled and reinstalled dropbox.
Logged back in.
It has a lot of indexing to do but it is moving quickly, I'll let it run overnight and reassess in the morning.

All comments

Megan

Hey @TWISTY, I'd be more than happy to help!

Are you certain that you have no other software that could be monitoring the Dropbox folder or app?

Have you contacted your ISP for further assistance on this matter?

Also, how many files do you have inside your Dropbox folder at the moment? You should be able to check its Properties, if you need to find out more.

Let me know how it goes.

TWISTY

Thanks for the reply.

Are you certain that you have no other software that could be monitoring the Dropbox folder or app?

No new software has been installed in the last 6 months or so.

Have you contacted your ISP for further assistance on this matter?

Yes, they said if it isn't affecting other apps then contact dropbox. I checked by uploading a 500MB file to Google Drive via browser which took 3 minutes.
I uploaded the same file to dropbox via browser which also took about 3 minutes.
This same file would take hours on dropbox via desktop app.

Also, how many files do you have inside your Dropbox folder at the moment? You should be able to check its Properties, if you need to find out more.

On my desktop there are 235,535 items, most of those are "online only".
I do use selective sync so there is a lot more within dropbox that I do not need access to.

TWISTY

Megan

Thanks for the heads up @TWISTY!

Definitely keep an eye on it, and let me know how it turns out.

TWISTY

Seems to be working fine now. For reference, the below is what fixed it.
1. logged out of dropbox

2. uninstalled drobox

3. reinstalled dropbox
4. logged back in

TWISTY

The slow syncing issue came back. But once again doing the following solved it. Hopefully it doesn't happen every 2 months....

logged out of dropbox on desktop app (preferences > accounts > sign out)
uninstalled drobox
reinstalled dropbox
logged back in

alex g.33

I've been having this problem intermittently for years. Currently it happens at least once per month. This is torture. I'm getting ready to switch to a different cloud storage provider.

Hannah

Hey @alex g.33, thanks for the nudge here and sorry to hear about this.

Do the steps that the OP provided above, help at all?

alex g.33

@HannahI've tried OP's steps in the past and they did resolve the problem, but only temporarily, and the re-indexing takes a very long time so it's not something I want to be doing on a regular basis. Fortunately I can often resolve the problem by quitting the dropbox app and restarting it. I now have to this pretty much daily or the dropbox sync speed will drop to 16 KB/s even though my internet service clocks 160 Mb/s.

I don't understand why it's taking years for Dropbox to even acknowledge this issue let alone do anything to fix it. I've seen many people post about this issue but it always seems like dropbox staff are just hearing about it for the first time. I'm starting to think that Dropbox has a policy that prevents support staff from publicly acknowledging their software's bugs.

alex g.33

. . . crickets . . .

TWISTY

This happened again.
Logging out and back in worked but I lost an hour or more of work time while re-indexing happened. Seems to happen every 2-3 months. Frustrating and terrible service considering we are paying for 365TB of storage.

ravenmb

Hey all... I may be a bit late to the game here, but I too was experiencing this issue. I was about to uninstall Dropbox and reinstall as this thread suggested, but then I realized that I had recently uploaded a ton of files (hundreds of GB's) and it occurred to me that I didn't make them 'online only' after the upload. I checked my hard drive space and it was nearly full because so many files I had just uploaded were still local in my Dropbox folder (IE- taking up space on my computer's hard drive). I made the folder in question 'Online Only' (you can do this by clicking on the folder in question in your local Dropbox folder once, then Control>click on the folder; from the menu, select "Make online-only". Moments later, the space on my hard drive opened back up, I dropped 50GB's of fresh video files into my Dropbox folder and it uploaded in about 2 minutes (I have gig speed internet... Fios). Viola! Back to normal.

Don't forget to make the folders within your local Dropbox folder "Online-only". If your hard drive is almost full because you fail to do this, files will stop uploading to Dropbox. At least locally.

I'd imagine to work around this, to upload via web browser all the time. That way, the files should automatically be set to 'online-only'.

I'd put money down that the folks who re-install only to find it happening again a few days, week or months later is because they're not making the files "Online-only".

TWISTY

Thanks for trying to help but you are definitely wrong. I'm well aware of the "Online-only" and "Make available offline' feature. I'm only using 1/10 of my local hard drive storage.

ravenmb

I may be wrong for your situation, Twisty, but it was 'right' for my situation. And may be for others, too. I apologize that you didn't find any value in my post. Just another reason why to not even post to try and help folks out.

itsTYT

Same issue here but reinstall didn't help. Also what's weirder is it's only happening on one computer on the network. Laptop runs fine. Desktop is mucked

ravenmb

You may have already done this, but just in case... make sure all files are 'Online Only'. My issue was on my desktop and not my laptop... but I realized one of my larger folders was set to save locally and it took up all my hard drive space. I made it 'Online Only' and things got back to normal.

TWISTY

Yes, same here, when this happens with my desktop my laptop is fine.

I presumed you logged out of dropbox before uninstalling, that seems to be key.

TWISTY

Hello Hannah
This thread is marked as solved, but it is not solved. Can you change that please.
My fix is a temporary work around but it has not solved the issue.

TWISTY

Hello Megan
This thread is marked as solved, but it is not solved. Can you change that please.
My fix is a temporary work around but it has not solved the issue.

itsTYT

I desire it to live locally though and I've set it to an external drive. One thought is to try it on the local ssd but this doesn't explain the slow browser upload. It's almost as if something in the MacOS doesn't like the Dropbox servers

ravenmb

Understood. Another thing is to make sure MacOS is up to date (if it's not already). Of course, sometimes updates can cause these problems, too. Hope you figure it out!

Hannah

Hey @TWISTY, since we're working on @itsTYT's issue on a different thread, for your specific case, can you try our more advanced reinstall, to see if that helps?

alex g.33

This solution was only temporary for me. The problem recurrs after a couple weeks. After several years it's getting obvious that Dropbox has no intention of addressing this. I think the only solution is to switch to a different storage provider