Feature request: Really miss the feature to have Dropbox default to making all files downloaded and available for offline open/save. I will always, 100% of the time, want Dropbox to keep all my selected-to-sync files to also be downloaded and available for offline use. 

I know you can right-click to request offline availability, but this creates a bit of an unclear situation as you can't see by looking at a file in Finder whether it is supposed to be offline available or not.  I want this to just be the way Dropbox works.

Since there is the option to do this on a per file / folder basis using right-click, seems likely possible for Dropbox to make this effectively on-by-default for every file, with the user doing the gesture. 

HW: Apple M1 Pro

OS: Ventura 13.5 (22G74)

Dropbox ver: v180.3.4837 & joined beta

Dropbox beta has an incomprehensible behavior when using the file provider feature on macOS.
As shown in the finder screenshot below, I have set "Make available offline" except for a few folders. However, the cloud with arrow icon(next to the dropbox icon) is "not downloaded" and the dropbox status in the menubar is "your files are up to date". 

Doesn't "make available offline" mean that all files are accessible offline on my macbook? But what does "not downloaded" mean?

No matter how long I waited, the "your files are up to date" status didn't change, so I finally clicked on the cloud icon in the finder to actually download the files. After that, the dropbox status didn't change even after hours of waiting in "syncing..." as shown in the screenshot below.

16GB RAM

macOS Sonoma 14.4

Dropbox v194.4.6267

For some time now I have been unable to set files or folders as "available offline" in actuality. The check mark next to the file or folder changes to a green tick when I choose to "make available offline" but the cloud icon (seems this is a macOS icon, not a Dropbox one) remains and the file does not download unless I try to open it, at which point it downloads and becomes an offline file.

I have scoured the forums and the only article I can find was from the Dropbox Beta some time ago and that didn't seem to get resolved.

Does anyone have a workaround or solution for this?

I also have Google Drive running on my Mac and thought this may be an issue so uninstalled it but no luck.

I then logged back into the Advocates Account and discovered there wasn't any info, apart from the usual "Log in to our Website," which leads to the Dropbox Teams Page. Goodness, I had taken some screenshots of my Advocate Account details late last month, when I noticed there weren't any more challenges to complete. Let me know if you need me to share them with you!

Please advise me on what happens to our previous 'Advocates Rewards Points' progress? How can I update, transfer, or redeem them, considering that I was left with a slight amount to reach the next redeemable level (5000)?

I also need to confirm, now that we have migrated to the new Deeto Community Account, should I also uninstall its Mobile App? And, related to that, does the Deeto have a Mobile App? Thank you.

That's the latest screenshot of the Dropbox Advocate Challenges Website!

Thank you.

Hi,

My Dropbox sync is stuck forever, no idea why. See attached screens.

Question or Issue
I am have very slow upload speeds. It is taking 50 minutes to upload a 2.2 gig file.  My upload speed is 490.  I thought it was my computer, so I purchased a new one.  Went from M2 to M4.  No change at all.

Question or Issue

After a recent update I got error messages about the Finder and Dropbox started defaulting to saving my documents in the Dropbox cache, ".dropbox" (which I did not know existed).  I then deleted the cache.  This morning I was required to log in to Dropbox and go through the process of resyncing everything.  And then even though I did not ask that the files be offloaded to the cloud, every one of my folders and files has the cloud icon next to it (on my desktop).  I am a little anxious about what awaits me with my office iMac which is significantly older and slower.

Question or Issue
I’ve had the same “Updating 42 files” on my monitor tab icon for over a year. after syncing new addition, it reverts to this notice. There is nowhere I can find what or where these 42 files are to be found. With the disaster of the mixed main filer location since it was moved into the Library, where I now have two folders residing, Things are getting more complicated and less reliable, a situation that seems to go hand in hand everywhere I encounter ‘more complicated.’ In Preferences>Sync>Dropbox folder updates “You are using Dropbox on File Provider. To opt out ...

1st question: how to get rid of “Updating 42 files

2nd question; how to have a single Library folder? Do I have to compare the two folders, file at a time? Cuz that would be a real PIA and I could lose data as several people in this forum have already experienced. files copied with zero info.

3rd question. Does anybody try these new systems out in real world situations?

Jay [removed per the Community Guidelines], Kenwood CA

Sequoia 15.7.3
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
244.4.6580

Question or Issue
I have set my preferences within dropbox to "Online only" for file location moving forward. Im trying to upload a folder (about 800 gb in size) and it's saying I need to clear up local storage still on my MacBook. Which means dropbox is still trying to default to Offline access for files even tho I changed the settings to Online only. 

Help is a misnomer because all too often it tells what you can do without telling you HOW TO

I need a dummies guide, at nearly 80 my brain does not see the obvious, I need help on HOW to do things, but mostly to keep my files updates everywhere.

Sele3ct a tag it says - but how and where, please stop assuming a level of knowledge from your users, we are not all tech savvy.

Issue
While organising and renaming files in Finder, I accidentally typed the \ character in one of the file names. I corrected it almost immediately, but not before Dropbox had registered it as a file that it couldn't upload.

Now I'm getting a constant message about how "1 file is unable to sync" and telling me to remove the special character.

But that file effectively doesn't exist anymore (at least not with the faulty name). I therefore can't "view" it or "fix" it. And there doesn't appear to be a way of getting Dropbox to drop the matter.

How can I get Dropbox to dismiss this now non-existent issue?

(The file with the corrected name is syncing just fine, I can view it on Dropbox[dot]com, etc.)

Question or Issue
I have been trying to change the location of my Dropbox folder using the Change location tab in the preferences......sync part of my app, from am almost full C: drive to my virtually empty D: drive. The process begins, and although all of my files are stored offline, the program begins to download them, and ultimately the process stops since my original C: Dropbox folder is out of storage.  Is there a fix for this problem? Thanks

In advanced, I'm sorry for my long text and spelling errors)

I have a shared Dropbox with my colleges, and I work from home. Earlier this week I was working in InDesign, and it crashed while I was working. A message said it was a serious error, but no info what the error was about. (I have attached several screenshots below) Anyway, I started InDesign again, but the document I was working on could not be opened, because it was damaged. I work as a freelance book designer, but luckily for me I was only working on a book cover, and not the inside of the book. It was annoying, but not the end of the world. 

This was just the beginning. Now every single time I open an InDesign document from Dropbox, all the links is just shown as blank, like there is nothing there. It's just like a white new document, with nothing there, only the text. Nothing is linked anymore, and I have to link every singe images again. Let's say I have 50 images in a folder, it doesn't link everything at once, which is crazy annoying and extremely time consuming. Sometimes when I open a document in InDesign it seems fine for one second, but then all the images shows up like "crazy art" (screenshot 2) After I link an image, it seems to be okay the next time I open the document, luckily. But I have a lot of book projects and it's a crazy amount of time fixing everything manually.

I also get weird messages when opening a document (the bottom screenshots) 

It also seems to be a problem when I have a document open, and want to edit a picture. I choose to open the picture in Photoshop, and edit there. When saving the document, it usually update the file in InDesign automatically, but not now. I guess it's  just a part of the same problem. 

I have no idea what to do to fix the problem. All Indesign documents on my computer is fine, so the problem is only between Dropbox and Indesign, and not InDesign alone. I always work with the documents/folders (available offline) and I have never had a problem with this before the crash.

I have already contacted Dropbox customer service. After a lot of back and forth, they said the problem is with Adobe. Then I contacted Adobe (which has terrible customer service) and they told me the problem is Dropbox. So here I am, with no clue on how to fix the problem.

I have restarted Indsign and Dropbox, but nothing changed. I don't know what will happen with new documents placed in dropbox yet, but fingers crossed the issue will not effect new work. Time will show after the Holiday.

Happy Stressfull Easter to me I guess :P

Question or Issue
I am trying to use the new ignore rules file to ignore things like "node_modules" using rule "node_modules/".

It seems to correctly ignore and not upload the node_modules directory, but it still spends a lot of time indexing them. This is not what I would expect. If it matches an ignore rule, why waste time and CPU indexing it?

Thanks,

D

Problem

Just out of a sudden, with no obvious reason, Dropbox decided that 40,000 files needed updating! Though in reality they are not. I just worked on a few text files. My working day is ruined because I can't wait till they are synced!

Currently we have been using Boxifier to sync the 3 local drives with folders/files on each between 2 locations, so that both locations can open their local file on their D:\ and the linked files on W and F still link and open correctly. Worked well till recently!

With the recent Boxifier "issues" (more likely DB changes that broke it, and its taking an age to fix) I was thinking - Make 3 folders in the root of the Dropbox sync folder (whereever you have set that up), F_Drive, W_Drive and D_Drive. You can then map these drives in both locations to the matching drive letter and put your files on them. 

You then work/open files from the mapped drives (and never the Dropbox folder), which means any files being referenced load in from the mapped drives - but all the files are really in the Dropbox folder still and syncing as normal.

Can anyone see an issue with this? Has anyone found a good solution to this issue? Someone suggested this and said it worked, but I just want to check with the wider community before we drop Boxifer and change over!

Thanks,

Mark

Files originally stored in the /user/document/dropbox automatically moved to new location ~Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox despite after checking the Opt Out option while reinstalling. 

Despite I have tried many times to remove the previous version settings (see link below), I will see new files being synced into my designated local drive location first and silently move to the new location (cloudstorage) 5mins after every new installation. I believe the auto-updating features never observe the Opt Out option that I chose. I tried to remove dropbox related files in the /library/LaunchAgents, /library/dropbox and /library/Application Support/dropbox in different times, but files will come back as dropbox somehow will download them back to the machine, making sure they will update to the latest version.

Is there any real solution to this by not moving my files in the original location to cloudstorage. I am so many code tired to the original location.

Appreciate someone can advise.

https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall#reinstallDropboxmac

Device
(MacBook Air M2)
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
(macOS26.3 Tahoe)
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
(244.4.6580)
Dropbox Plan
(Basic)

Question or Issue
Heavily use Dropbox for my business and love the application, however I just transitioned to new computer and when moved over Dropbox has been auto generating an enormous (tens of thousands...enough for Dropbox to send me emails wondering if something is wrong) number of files in the delete folder.  These files have unusual names, none of which I have generated or used.  They include names such as: Album-prepare-marker.plj, journalAttr.101616, .dat.nosync2FO.JZcDX8, and a lot similar to eat_jounalAttr_BCE8333B1-A91E-4B9D-97B6-65618...E9_6289556_95721.processed, an entire folder with: file cache.DAE6E2DC-BE92-42E1-A959-1A562426A8D9

There are a lot of others, these are just a few.

Can someone recommend how this can be addressed?  It is clogging up my Dropbox, showing up in recent activity, and driving notifications to my email for things I haven't done.

Appreciate the support.  Mike

I am running the latest Dropbox on MacOS Tahoe v26.3 (not a new install).  As you can see, I have always had my files set to be available offline:

However, any time I upload a file, it does not download to my computer as expected:

How do I instruct Dropbox to always keep my files offline?  I do not have any ignore rules or any other special circumstances, and the computer has ample storage space.  Finally, I am on the Dropbox Plus plan, and I'm using around 10G of the 2T available.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thank you,

Josh

I found other references to multiple Dropbox folders on the forum, but they all seemed to have just one of them syncing. I have both syncing and can only stop one of them. What should I do?

Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Windows 10
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
244.4.6580 auto updated on 3-18-2026

Syncing Status
 "Syncing 7 files"

Question or Issue
Since the app updated on my computer, none of the files are being uploaded, Only files from my pictures are uploaded. 

I researched on the web and supposedly by pausing the sync and reactivating would kick it back to work and did not, Then to get all the files that were not sync out of drop box completely and copy them in a folder out of drop box, then restarting the computer and placing them back in would also be a way and nothing. Still have the same updating issue...

Checking the files that were not Synched found a .dropbox.cache folder and inside had a .canary file trying also to sync.

Read some posts but they are too old and the answeres or steps have changed since then, since I followed the steps but could not get to the "FIX" last step.  I'm not a very computer savvy and tried to research in here or google for an answer but could not find any that would work on my computer.

I have dropbox since 2011 and never had any issues, and all started since the computer did this update. Can anyone help?

I’m experiencing an issue with Dropbox desktop syncing and would really appreciate your help.

I have a Dropbox Plus account. When I upload files through the web interface, everything works normally. The uploaded files are also visible on my other devices.

However, on my two Mac laptops, when I add files into the local Dropbox folder, the app gets stuck on "indexing" and does not proceed to upload or sync the files.

Here is the situation:

- Web uploads: working normally

- Other devices: syncing correctly

• Local Dropbox folders (2 laptops): stuck on indexing, no upload occurs

I am currently located in China and using a proxy/SSH tunnel (SOCKS5 via 127.0.0.1:7070). I suspect this might be related to network or connectivity issues affecting the desktop app.

I have already tried:

- Restarting Dropbox

- Reinstalling Dropbox

- Changing network / proxy settings

But the issue still persists.

Has anyone experienced this before or knows how to fix it?

Thanks in advance!

Device:

MacBook (2 devices)

Operating System:

macOS (latest version)

Dropbox App Version:

Latest version (auto-updated)

Syncing Status:

Stuck on "Indexing" (creating index), no upload progress

Question or Issue
I moved Dropbox to my D\: drive in order to clear space on my C\: drive

I had to disable backups to make the move

I then received an email telling me 4680 files were deleted

I try to enable backups for Documents and it won't, stating 'Dropbox and folder are on different drives'

I move Documents (Properties > Location > Move) to
D:\Dropbox\Documents (2026)
It won't backup, stating 'Not in default location'

Is it possible have have Dropbox on the D\: drive and make backups of Desktop, Documents and Downloads?

I'm concerned that my files are being deleted according to the email I received.

Can someone please help?

How it started

It began with a routine reorganization — moving files across some large directories. Dropbox simply stopped syncing. It froze. No error message, no clear indication of what went wrong. I contacted Dropbox support. We exchanged multiple messages. Despite their good intentions, they were unable to help me resolve it.

So I went down the path of solving it myself.

What I tried

After exhausting every troubleshooting option I could find, I made the decision to do a full Dropbox removal. I bought a 24TB external drive, moved all my files there as a safety net, and did a clean reinstall of Dropbox from scratch.

The new installation runs on the File Provider API. That's when the real problem started.

The File Provider trap

After the clean install, Finder no longer recognized the Dropbox folder as a proper Dropbox directory. No Online Only / Local controls. No sync icons. Just a folder full of zero-byte files I couldn't open or work with.

The reason: I have over 600,000 files. The File Provider migration requires under 300,000 files to grant eligibility. So I'm permanently stuck in legacy mode — which has no mechanism to force-download folders in bulk. Every file only downloads when opened individually. For a software engineer trying to work with a project containing 22,000 files, that's completely unusable.

I tried everything:

• Full uninstall and clean reinstall multiple times
• Clearing all CloudStorage domains via Terminal
• touch, cat, cp to /dev/null, brctl download — none work in legacy mode
• Killing conflicting File Provider extensions from OneDrive and Google Drive helpers
• Multiple Selective Sync configurations
• Each test took hours because of the file volume

The double failure

This is a failure on two fronts.

Apple forced every cloud storage provider onto the File Provider API without adequate consideration for power users with large libraries. The 300,000-file eligibility cap is arbitrary and punishes exactly the users who rely on Dropbox most. brctl download — the only CLI tool to force file downloads — only works inside /Library/CloudStorage, making bulk downloads impossible in legacy mode.

Dropbox had years to prepare its users for this transition. There was no clear communication that users with large libraries would lose core functionality. No migration path for people with 500K+ files. No bulk download tool. No fallback. Just a quiet "you are not eligible" message that leads to a dead end.

Where I am now

I'm currently downloading my active project folders locally and moving them to an external drive. My plan is to do a serious cleanup — get below 300,000 files — and see if that finally makes the File Provider work properly. If it does, great. If not, I'll migrate to Google Drive. Not because it's better, but because at least there's no expectation gap.

If anyone has gone through this and found a way out, I'd love to hear it. I'm a software engineer. I've tried everything I can think of. And I'm genuinely stuck.

To other users with large libraries

If you have more than 300,000 files and are seeing the "not eligible" message, the only viable path right now is Selective Sync to reduce your active file count. There is no CLI workaround. There is no bulk download tool in legacy mode. Plan for hours of sync time per attempt.

I hope this saves someone the days I lost.

Device
(Macbook Pro M2)
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
(macOS 26.3)
Dropbox App Version/Browser Version
(243.3.6933)

Issue
We are using Dropbox via File Provider on macOS 26.
The message appears when a local file is made online-only. We see this with Pages, Numbers, and Microsoft Office files.

Strangely, it does not happen all the time, but it can be disruptive when we are trying to free up space on the system.

Does anyone recognize this, and is this message coming from Dropbox or from macOS?

I'm using Dropbox version 244.4.6580 on Mac Pro Apple M2.

This is how it looks in file explorer:

This is the settings in the app:

This is the properties of the Dropbox-folder: