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Request: All files available offline by default
Moving the Mac to the new File Provider is great - very happy this is finally happening and support on the new M1 is much better. Kudos!
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.
Hi everyone, and thanks for your patience.
We're re-launching the option to choose the default status of synced files in the Dropbox desktop application (in the Preferences > Sync tab) for users of the newer File Provider version.
It should be available to you shortly. If you haven't received it yet, make sure to update your desktop app, and let us know if you have any questions!
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There is no such option at all in the recent beta builds on macOS. There used to be an option for "Online-only" or "Local" by default, but after the move to the macOS File Provider and native M1 support, that option is no longer in the UX.
This is a request to get that feature back.
I have the same problem. I also have a new MacPro with an M1 and opted for offline files choosing the Save hard drive space automatically "off". However, the files remained online-only. Would this be a glitch?
... also notable that I have 100+ GB of files not yet downloaded, and the Dropbox icon in the Menu Bar will often show no activity, as though it thinks it is done. Yet the cloud download icons are next to huge numbers of folders, still.
I will re-click the "Make available offline" option in Finder, which tends to kick Dropbox into doing some syncing. But then it will stop as though it thinks it is done again, still with a ton of files not yet downloaded.
That's a bit of a separate bug. If I could just right click "make available offline" and know that Dropbox would keep downloading until everything was local, then great. But since that also doesn't work, I'd much prefer the old global option to make everything local would return.
Seeing this behavior in all the recent builds since the new File Provider version for M1 support came out. Right now on build 146.2.496, but its been going on for weeks like this.
Facing the same problem on MacOS 12.3 (both on an M1 machine and an Intel machine). The option to download all new files by default isn't available anymore in the preferences menu and new files & folders are not downloaded automatically. This has been so for over 6 weeks now and the latest build I'm on v146.3.4795 isn't any different.
This is a huge regression issue. Surprised it's still lingering.
DaveDropbox Staff
Thanks Dave, appreciate the reply.
But to make it clear this issue isn't on the visual indication that has changed in the beta. In the current beta implementation, if a user wants to make sure that all files are stored locally and available offline, we would need to manually select “make available offline” every single time a new file is added. Regardless on where it's added in the folder hierarchy.
This behaviour defeats to purpose of having a dropbox client app. Users would get the same experience (files are online-only by default) if you'd only give us access to our files via a browser with the ability to download.
Thanks again for the response, it is really appreciated! However, agreed that the feature request - which is how I had always used Dropbox - is to always sync all files and keep full, local copies of all of them on my disk.
This was clearly a key feature of the product for a very long time, and had a dedicated option in the preferences. Would just like to see it come back. If it is indeed planning to come back, I can probably wait a little while. If this is not how Dropbox intends to work in the future, then I'm not sure it will be meeting my needs.
Also note that I have been clicking "Make available offline" frequently, but for weeks of doing so, still don't have the files all local, and the Dropbox app appears to happily say that I am up to date and no need to sync. So even that behavior doesn't appear to be working as expected.
... and one thing to ask for clarification: how would I click on the Dropbox root? It is no longer a folder in Finder, but only a "location" in the sidebar. Right-clicking that location doesn't offer the Dropbox context menus. So I can right-click on folders within Dropbox, but not the "root" folder and described in this suggestion. Am I missing how to do this? Thank you!
Dave - (so sorry for the piling on...) - Any idea why I get "Access Denied" trying to go to the link to the forum post you referenced? Tried several times, and am logged in (obviously.) Would love to read it.
