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Where's the Linux preferences GUI? The CLI doesn't work.

The title says it all. While setting up a fresh laptop with EndeavourOS, I was able to load the UI from an older installation for a moment until it closed itself. This usually happens when the app is running a self update, and given this was a 2 week old backup, this makes sense.

Upon loading it up, the Preferences option now loads up a window with the following:

Why? Why was the old preferences UI removed in favor of this? This isn't an upgrade in the slightest, and clicking More Settings simply takes me to the CLI instructions page. While this is okay for me, it isn't okay for my family who is making the switch over and are not terminal warriors. Well, that would be the case if the terminal command even worked right:

So, I really do have to ask: what is going on here and how can I have my older, at least functional, GUI back?

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Flame Soulis

And just in case, I decided to force the system to prevent loading any updates, and this is the older UI that shows up from v214.

So, what's the big deal with the removal of this window?

Megan

Hey @Flame Soulis, thanks for posting here today!

I'm wondering if the behavior you noticed earlier was because you used our beta version (221.3) instead of our stable one.

Just to make sure we're aligned here. It looks like that second window is what you were looking for, right? You don't seem to have any issues with that. Feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong.

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there.

Flame Soulis

Good evening, Megan!

I've reviewed my installation and the version I installed was 214. The dropbox system itself appears to be automatically updating the system to 221.3, which I confirmed with another machine (an Ubuntu 24.04 laptop that previously had v220).

The only way to prevent this is to lock the .dropbox-dist folder, but this prevents the system from synchronizing correctly.

Additionally, on the page that loads up when you click on More Settings, it states the following:

Note: Selective sync, proxy, and bandwidth settings are now only available through the Command Line Interface (CLI).

This was updated on March 21st of this year.

Also, I could not link the page without receiving the following error:

RyanFromDropbox

Hi @Flame Soulis,

I'm on the Product team at Dropbox -- thank you for reaching out!

We're in the process of rolling out changes to our Linux application, which include simplifying portions of the interface and migrating certain preference options (e.g., Selective Sync) over to a CLI-only interaction.

Right now, this is only rolled out to Beta users; and it looks like you're currently on a Beta build, which explains the recent change in your UI.

Given this change, I want to help troubleshoot the CLI issue you're having -- and make sure it's working as expected.

It looks like the dropbox command on your system might not be pointing to the expected Dropbox CLI tool at /usr/bin/dropbox. That could explain the behavior you're seeing.

Can you please try running the CLI directly like this: /usr/bin/dropbox help?

That should give you the correct help output -- let me know if that works!

Cheers,

Ryan

Flame Soulis

Good evening, Ryan!

The issue is that I didn't download or install the beta build on the Ubuntu laptop, so if this was for beta only, it appears to have somehow become part of the release.

Either way, here is the output of /usr/bin/dropbox help

Granted, this is on the EndeavourOS laptop I use, and not the Ubuntu laptop. The Arch setup bases the installation from the .dropbox-dist tarball archive for the releases, and copies it to /opt/dropbox. The dropbox binary is then linked to /usr/bin/dropbox.

The AUR noted it was based on 214. I manually updated it to 220.4.4126 with the same process, which produced the results above. The .dropbox-dist folder had writing permissions removed to prevent the automatic update to 221.3. If you feel this will hurt testing, let me know and I can let it perform the automatic updates.

Because I understand that Arch is not one of the supported distributions, I will be reviewing the Ubuntu 24.04 laptop once I get home and repeat for the sake of brevity, as that was set up from the DEB packages from the website. Despite that, it also updated itself to 221.3.

Rich

Flame Soulis wrote:
Despite that, it also updated itself to 221.3.

Do you have Early Releases enabled in your account settings?

Flame Soulis

Rich wrote:
Do you have Early Releases enabled in your account settings?

Absolutely nailed it! It was turned on, since I liked to check the next version out on Windows in the past. I had no idea it was an account setting.

RyanFromDropbox

Hi @Flame Soulis -- Thanks for providing this context!

Based on your response and screenshots, it looks like you're using a non-standard setup for Dropbox on Linux.

You're missing the wrapper (dropbox) that actually implements the command line interface. This is a separate package named nautilus-dropbox that you can get here: https://github.com/dropbox/nautilus-dropbox

As we roll out the simplified preferences experience on Linux, you'll need this to ensure the Dropbox CLI works as expected!

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Ryan

hsiktas

For me, having a solid native Linux client is one of the main reasons I use Dropbox over alternatives from Google and Microsoft.

The Linux client has always felt like an afterthought compared to the more feature-rich Windows and Mac versions, but that was acceptable because it still resembled the cleaner, more focused Dropbox experience from around 2010.

This new (still beta) change feels like you're degrading the Linux experience to little more than a headless CLI version, with only a minimal tray icon left as the sole GUI layer. At that point, there’s barely any distinction from cloud-agnostic CLI tools like `rclone`, and I seriously doubt you’ll retain many users after a downgrade like this.

The biggest UX downgrade, in my opinion, is managing Selective Sync. Commands like `dropbox exclude add foo bar` and `dropbox exclude remove baz qux` are clunky, and the double-negation logic of "exclude remove" is especially unintuitive.

Flame Soulis

This is honestly why I created my forum account to figure this out. The fact this is going to be the next version just... why? It really doesn't make sense to completely degrade the user experience, especially since the whole point of using Dropbox was to get away from doing CLI stuff, and as the family IT person, no one in my household is exactly cheerful about this change.

As much as I could work on writing my own sub-GUI system for managing things, it shouldn't be needed. If I'm not mistaken, DropBox is still using Qt... which works on all platforms, so why can't anyone just compile for that? What sucks more about this change is I'm locked in on an annual subscription, and I JUST had my renewal done last month. As Windows 10's EOL approaches, I've made the switch to Linux in preparation for this, along with all my tools, and Dropbox's downgrade is going to remain in my mind for a while.

Nerdgasm

I'm an Arch-based distro user as well and the change to having the CLI caught me off guard and absolutely ruined not only my day, but my next few months. I have an open escalated support ticket with support right now and all they really told me to do was go to the older version. I have responded by telling them that it is not a solution, just a temporary workaround that only pushes our anger to a slightly later date. I haven't paid thousands of dollars to Dropbox just to have core functionality ripped away from me. My organization manages currently about 70ish TBs of data in Dropbox with many thousands of files and folders that Selective Sync is used to manage. I told them that we are Dropbox users, not scripters, and this sort of change is trying to force us to be scripters. The amount of time lost by having to manage Selective Sync with CLI is immense. I expressed that it is literally cheaper for us to build the server infrastructure within our organization than it is to spend the person-hours using the CLI to manage Selective Sync. If they don't announce a re-adding of the GUI then we are implementing a short timeline that we have drafted to build the infrastructure and end our usage of Dropbox.

MrShifty

What Flame said. This is appalling to me. Why would you remove a critical feature that makes this product usable? When is this going to be put back? I need a timeline because that's what tells me whether or not I need to start hunting for and evaluating Dropbox alternatives. I really don't want to, but this is completely unacceptable.

Nerdgasm

They aren't going to add it back. This is what I was told after my support representative said they contacted the engineering team.
"They've confirmed that they don't plan to roll back the UI changes. At this stage, I'm unable to provide a specific date for when they will be rolled out to users on the stable release. "

MrShifty

Well they need to reconsider that. This like a car company just deciding to remove steering wheels from their cars. It's not okay.

My plan renews in October. That gives them six months to fix this problem or they'll lose me as a customer, and I will make sure all the others I've recommended Dropbox to leave as well. This includes businesses. This is one of the most anti-usability moves I've seen a company do.

Nerdgasm

Well you better prepare for that because there aren't enough Linux users for them to care about us. They aren't going to change their minds on this.

MrShifty

Whoa... they appear to have fixed this! Can anyone else confirm the settings window has been added back in?