Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?

Everyone, as Akos said just leave it running even if it looks stuck in 'Syncing...'. Eventually it will be up to date.

C´mon guys @Dropbox ... What is going on? The thing is stuck at "Syncing" ... THIS IS A BUG, please do kindly fix it.

Thanks in advance

Windows 10 - Same problem here for the last few days.
tried every suggested fix but nothing stops it 'Syncing...' - ridiculous. 

First Step - Went from Pro to Plus and if tomorrow nothing works will just get out of here. What a plonkers !!!!

For about two days now several of my systems have been stuck at "Syncing..." That includes one desktop running Windows 10 and two servers running Windows Server 2012 R2.

I have two other Windows Server 2012 R2's that are not having this issue and one MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina also without this problem. All are on the same dropbox version which is v88.4.172

So far I've tried restarting the affected computers and obviously restarting Dropbox. I've tried fixing hardlinks and folder permissions. Nothing is working and the three systems I noted above are still after two days stuck at "Syncing..." with no other information available to me.

I've looked at the disk access of the dropbox processes and they don't seem to be doing much. Barely reading from the C drive at a few bytes. Seems like it has stalled but why? - No idea.

Honestly I'm very angry about this, I'm a paying customer and right now this is unusable. I want a refund for all the time I'm losing.

I've been a loyal dropbox customer for many years.. but this is ridiculus.. by far the worst upgrade we've seen. 

Agree. It took 2 days, 2 days..2 weeks ago had similar problems, at least they fixed it then. Now...nothing. support chat just gave me the general bla-bla. I pay 20 dollars each month, this is really becoming ridiculous. Dropbox used to be such a reliable service. Now, I don't trust them anymore.

I'm currently looking around for other providers and plans. Any suggestions? GDrive, OneDrive?

I was able to fix two of my systems by completely uninstalling Dropbox and then reinstalling it. This update is clearly messed up somewhere. After waiting 2 days for it to "work" reinstalling it made it work within 30 minutes on both systems.

Come on Dropbox... get it together.

Hey everyone, thanks for joining the discussion here!

I'm really sorry to hear about the issues you've had over the weekend with syncing. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their input on what worked for them.

I'm very happy to hear that the steps worked for you lucaspinhro, thanks for updating me with this!

If anyone is still having this issue where syncing appears to be stuck (Joshua5, Matt F.16, CAGR), can you please take a look at the steps mentioned here to see if that does the trick?

After taking the above steps, you'll need to allow a short time for the changes to take affect before you see syncing progress. The more files you have, the longer this might take as it applies the changes to the files.

Akos, anonymous, Exis and hdmf I located your tickets with our Support team and have passed along all of your comments there too to keep my colleagues who are assisting you there in the loop. They'll be able to assist you best from there.

kelly75, if you're still having an issue with this, would you mind if I reach out to the email linked with your profile?

Thanks for all your patience while we look into this with you, don't hesitate to get back to me with any updates or questions.

I hope you all have a great day!

Hi Daphne, I cannot follow the directions because my Dropbox runs on a headless Linux server. There is no GUI. No preferences. I can only control it with the command-line (CLI): python.py status

python.py start

python.py stop

..etc..

What do I do?! Daphne 

I'm in the same boat. I'd started another thread about it but not had any luck. I've tried the fixing of hardware links and permissions with no noticable difference to the state of syncing.

This seemed to really kick off around the 17th Jan. Sudden appearance of conflicted files causing problems in project sensitive folders. An initial fixing of permissions seemed to put a stop to that but its now been stuck syncing since Saturday. Just how long are we meant to wait before we get any sync feedback? I currently can't use dropbox which is somewhat problematic.

my original post 

BTW: Can we access message autosaves? One of mine has vanished and I'd like it back.

As an update to my situation:

No amount of time appears to unstick my sync status at "1 uploading, 7 downloading".

File explorer access is sluggish, worse in my dropbox folder.  The sync status icon overlays take many seconds to minutes to update; the larger files, the longer it takes.

I'm getting some new file downloads, although I have created very few on other machines and am not sure if its reliable.

I can create new file uploads, but one I did is labled "New Folder" when the folder has been renamed on my local computer, but online and on other devices it shows "new folder".

Having same issue. Files have not synced since Jan 9, 2020. I've reinstalled dropbox and it seems to be stuck and not syncing at all. Is Dropbox fixing this soon?

Update for me -- before my problem was that it would get stuck on Syncing #### files, Uploading #### files, Downloading #### files. Once again I tried restarting Dropbox, and now it's just stuck on "Syncing....." with no #'s. Ubuntu/Linux.

At first mine was just stuck at "syncing..." and so I reinstalled Dropbox to see if that clears up anything. It got stuck similarly to Sycing #### files, Downloading ####, Uploading ####. Left it for a few hours and the #### did not change at all. So I tried to unlink and relink Dropbox and similarly back to the "Syncing..." I did pretty much all of the steps of turning off the firewall, restarting the dropbox app, and restarting the computer. At the moment nothing helps. I only discovered the problem start of the weekend. Suffice to say, it has not been a good weekend.

Doing the same. Where are you moving? 

Same here. I pay them 20 euros monthly and this 'support' was ridiculous. Thanks for the tip!

Having the same issue. Dropbox should realize that this problem is on THEIR SIDE. They messed up with the latest update. Don't waste your time trying to fix it by reinstalling etc. The only thing that helped me is to use the „Fix Hardlinks“ button (Preferences, Account, press spacebar to show Support Features). Press the button and then wait until it shows message it has finished fixing and you are good to go before you restart or turn off/on your PC again.

Same problem here. Dropbox only says "syncing..." nothing else. And my drop disk usage is 100% precent but no internet traffic. So what dropbox is doing? Re-hashing all files? Because thats stupid. I have 950gb+ files, so hassing them takes more timing then re-downloading them. 

And please can you stop being like google, and test your software before releasing it?

Hello all, hoping you're all well today!

First of all, @Matt F.16 apologies for that! I will place the steps to do this via the command line on Linux devices in the "More info" box below since it's a little lengthy.

sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME"

sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox ~/.dropbox

sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox

sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox ~/.dropbox

Since you're having issues with conflicted copies too PatWard, I'd like to troubleshooting with you separately to avoid confusion so I'll be following up on the thread you mentioned ASAP! 

For those still having an issue, could you try the steps listed here and let me know how it goes? (gformenti, Siwinis, jeremyti)

tonyskate, I'm glad to hear that using the "Fix Hardlinks" helps out to an extent. However, if restarting your device results in stuck syncing again then I'd like to do some further troubleshooting with you, if you'd like to of course.

Can I reached out to you via the email linked with your profile to look into this with you?

Finally, thanks for your update Shawn B.14.  I'll get back to you via our email communication once I've had a look into this with the additional info you gave me here.

Thanks for your patience everyone, I'll be awaiting your updates!

Thanks Daphne.

The conflicted files issue seems to of resolved itself after I fixed permissions. Right now I've been stuck syncing since Saturday with no apparent change and can't upload so seem to be in the same situation as many others here.

And I appreciate it can't be much fun working on a help forum .. we only come here when something has gone wrong ..

Cheers.

Hi Daphne  -- completed the commands, but no change.. Still stuck on a blank "Syncing..."

[Jan 21 07:44 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py status
Syncing...
[Jan 21 07:44 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py stop
Dropbox isn't responding!
[Jan 21 07:45 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py stop
Dropbox isn't running!
[Jan 21 07:45 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py stop
Dropbox isn't running!
[Jan 21 07:45 PM][matt@server:~]$ sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME"
[sudo] password for matt: 
[Jan 21 07:45 PM][matt@server:~]$ sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox ~/.dropbox
[Jan 21 07:45 PM][matt@server:~]$ sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsGetColorsLiving
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsFlashColorLiving
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsFlashColorBoys
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsColorBed
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsGetColorsBed
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/eth/geth
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/eth/blockchain/geth.ipc
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsPowerBed
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/babysit_lircd
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsFlashColorMatt
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsFlashColorBed
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/bin/setLightsPowerLiving
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/Documents/Technical/Backups/android-workspace/School
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/Documents/Technical/android-workspace/School
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/Documents/bin
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop1.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop3.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wPing3.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wPing2.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop9.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams4.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams2.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams7.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams1.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop6.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wPing5.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams6.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop10.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wPing4.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams8.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop8.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop5.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop12.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams5.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop7.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop2.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wPing1.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop11.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wWebcams3.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/Zend
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/mfp/widgets/wRemoteDesktop4.php
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/server/www/jarvis
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /home/matt/Dropbox/src/jarvis/ui/images/neticons/mnt
[Jan 21 07:45 PM][matt@server:~]$ sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox ~/.dropbox
[Jan 21 07:46 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py start
Starting Dropbox...dropbox: locating interpreter
dropbox: logging to /tmp/dropbox-antifreeze-kYer41
dropbox: initializing
dropbox: initializing python 3.7.5
dropbox: setting program path '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/dropbox'
dropbox: setting python path '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172:/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/python-packages.zip'
dropbox: python initialized
dropbox: running dropbox
dropbox: setting args
dropbox: applying overrides
dropbox: running main script
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._constant_time.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._openssl.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._padding.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/psutil._psutil_linux.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/psutil._psutil_posix.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/apex._apex.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/matt/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-88.4.172/tornado.speedups.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
Dropbox isn't running!
Done!
[Jan 21 07:46 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py status
Syncing...
[Jan 21 07:46 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py status
Syncing...
[Jan 21 07:46 PM][matt@server:~]$ dropbox.py status
Syncing...

The chattr "Operation not supported errors" are on symlinks, which makes sense. There are 10,000's other files that should be syncing.