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New always-on preview pane crowds out valuable screen space on the iPad mobile app.

PaperQueen

Note: This is not about the preview pane that appears when you tap on a file name.

It is, however, about the persistent empty preview pane that appears each time you launch the app, regardless of where you are in Dropbox, before you tap on anything.

This has made using the app in vertical (portrait) challenging—read: nearly impossible—when split screen is required to access a second app. The persistent preview pane forces file names to cram themselves into a narrow area, truncating the bulk of the text.

Please tell me there's a setting to turn off this preemptive persistent empty pane. Tapping on a file name to open a pane is more than sufficient.

Photo: 13" iPad Pro with badly truncated file names before tapping on a file (i.e. no file has been opened). Before the recent update, file names extended the full width of the Dropbox window, including the yellow area.

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Accepted answers

Keith

Hi @PaperQueen, thanks for flagging this.

The team has identified the issue, and a fix is being rolled out now. Within the next 24 hours, if not already, restarting the app should get things back to normal.

Please let us know if the issue sticks around after that.

All comments

PaperQueen

EDIT:

It's nearly unusable in portrait mode, while viewing only Dropbox.
It's equally problematic is landscape mode (shown in the photo), when sharing the screen with another app.

My error, not making that more explicit in the original post.

Jay

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

What version of iOS and the Dropbox mobile app are you running on your device?

If you're not on a Dropbox Basic plan with more than 3 devices connected, could you try uninstalling the app, rebooting the device, and re-installing it to see if this helps?

Whatever details you can provide, even if they seem small, will help us get to the bottom of this together.

PaperQueen

This is occurring on two devices; the problem arose at the same time on each:

iPadPro: iOS 26.6 / Dropbox 486.2.2
iPad Air: iOS iOS 26.6 / Dropbox 486.2.2

Dropbox account: Dropbox Essentials (more than 3 devices connected)

I uninstalled, rebooted, reinstalled, and logged in on the iPad Air. Same problem. Initially, the home screen had the "x" in the top left corner of the empty preview pane. After tapping the "x" to close, the persistent "dead space" remained. See below (I haven't customized layout yet).

Jay

Thanks for the feedback on this matter.

I think it would be best to contact the support team since they have more tools and steps available to troubleshoot this matter for you.

You can submit a ticket to the team via this link while logged into your Dropbox account.

PaperQueen

If I read between the lines correctly, this is not expected/intended behavior…right? Odd that it's occurring simultaneously on two devices. Ahh, technology. Some days, it's divine, others, it's a trip down the rabbit hole.

Thanks for providing the link; I'll submit a ticket ASAP.

PaperQueen

Well, that's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back. No solution. AI chat repeated tasks that had already been tried and ruled out. I'm beyond frustrated.

Hannah

Thanks for the update here, @PaperQueen, and sorry to see that you had trouble with the AI assistant. I'll make sure to pass your comments along to our team.

Just one more thing, if you tap on "account", then on the gear icon at the top right corner of the screen, then on "clear cache" and restart the app, does that help in any way?

PaperQueen

Clearing the Dropbox app cache had no effect. That was one of the steps the AI bot had me do (repeatedly).

Keith

Hi @PaperQueen, thanks for flagging this.

The team has identified the issue, and a fix is being rolled out now. Within the next 24 hours, if not already, restarting the app should get things back to normal.

Please let us know if the issue sticks around after that.

PaperQueen

Thanks for posting this, Keith. Glad to hear the team found the problem and is rolling out a solution. Hopefully, this will also clear the persistent exclamation mark that appears next to the Dropbox icon in the iOS Files app, since the AI chatbot repeatedly linked the two as being part of the same problem.

Fingers crossed.

HayDegha

Any update on when the fix will be rolled out? The last time Dropbox was updated on my iPad was Aug 14.

Nancy

@HayDegha, have you tried restarting the mobile app in the meantime?

If you did, and you experience the same behavior, please go ahead and clear its cache, and then restart one more time.

To clear the Dropbox app’s cache, you can go to your Account tab, tap on the gear icon (top right corner) and scroll down to the bottom of the settings.

HayDegha

Yeah none of this works, which is hardly surprising considering that this exact behavior was reported by @PaperQueen , who also went through these steps. Since this was accepted as a bug and a fix was announced by @Keith , let me reiterate my question: When should we expect a patch to be rolled out?

PaperQueen

Any idea when the update will be rolled out? It's been three days, but I don't see an update.