Can't Drag Files to Dropbox Folder in Catalina

Agreed. I'm seeing nine pages of reports here after the Catalina upgrade, so I certainly hope at some point there will be a fix everyone here can apply.

To add to the pile, yes I have the same problem. Dropbox is pinned to my Finder sidebar. I used to be able to drag files onto it and they would move to my Dropbox folder. After the Catalina upgrade they just slide back to where I picked them up. I can however hold the files over the Dropbox sidebar item, wait for the folder to open, then drop them in there directly. Or if I open two Finder windows, I can drag between them. I can also pin and unpin the Dropbox folder to the sidebar, and it has full disk permissions in the MacOS settings. FileVault is enabled. I can use the drag-to-sidebar method for any other folder on my harddisk just fine. What is up?

I'd also like to throw in that I'm facing this issue and have been since upgrading. I've had no issues with anything else, only this dropbox issue. It's not the end of the world, just somewhat of an inconvenience as it deviates from my previous workflow. It would be great to know if this was a Dropbox problem or a macOS problem. My permissions using the new system are set to allow Dropbox full access to what it needs.

That would be just fine @Jane, thank you!

Many thanks for the speedy confirmation mlawson1986; please check your inbox when you have a spare minute! 😊

I am seeing the same inability to drop files on Dropbix folder in the Sidebar on Catalina. It is a new macbook pro with Catalina. My system meets the access requirements identified several posts ago. All other methods to move a file to DropBox folders work fine - seems to be isolated to only DropBox folder in sidebar.

I thought I would share this - I have been waiting for the permanent fix from Dropbox, which will BE this fix - it has not come out yet, so I thought I would share the fix that worked for me. I think this is all they are going to add into an update but I am not sure about that. Can you see if this works for you? You may have to restart your computer if it doesn't work, but I didn't have to.

Open Terminal, and enter this command (all one line):

IFS=$'\n'; for path in `python -c $'import os\nimport json\nfor key, value in json.loads(open(os.path.expanduser("~/.dropbox/info.json")).read()).items():\n print value["path"].encode("utf-8")'`; do echo "$path"; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$path"; done

Then try the drag and drop again!

Worked for me, thanks! I CANNOT believe how long they are taking to get this fixed to be honest. It's clear that a lot of people are having this problem but they act like it's some sort of ad hoc occurrence.

I like the idea of a command-line fix. However, I'm reluctant to be one of the first users :grin:

I've seen one person like this. Anybody else? And has anybody else (that knows what they're doing) parse this command line awesomeness out & consider its safety?

Thank you all for your paticipation and posting details of your user cases. 

We appreciate the solution posted donawalt. Kudos for being helpful in our Community. I hope to see more users post that this worked for them. 

batsonjay you are on my radar now. Check the email address associated with your Community profile.

We will take it from there. 

Thank you all for working on this with us!

Cool. Mail received, and replied-to. Thanks.

Hi donawalt & everybody else,

Could be used simpler variant, covering more cases, without using python, but 'jq':

IFS=$'\n'; for i in `cat ~/.dropbox/info.json | jq -r '.[] | .root_path, .path'`; do if [ "$i" != "null" ]; then echo "$i"; xattr -d -r com.apple.quarantine "$i"; fi; done

Just another variant covering business subscription's "root_path", also. :wink:

@donawalt Thanks, I did try your code and got this error message: 

No such xattr: com.apple.quarantine

Any insights?

Hi Phillip D.4,

That mean you have no problem with the quarantine on the directory. Set also "-r" attribute. i.e. byself this "error" mean "no problem"! :wink:

I've found an easy workaround for now. If you create a sub-folder in Dropbox (call it something like Extra or Stuff or whatever), you can drag that sub-folder to the sidebar and it will accept files. That sub-folder is now in your root Dropbox folder. At some point, you can go into your Dropbox folder and organize or clean out the sub-folder. It's not as elegant but it's much easier than C/V or other copy/paste solutions.

I've just discovered this problem on my own system, and just found this thread. I'm astonished this problem was reported so long ago and still hasn't been fixed! Can that be right? Since I pay for Dropbox, it seems to me that either this should be resolved promptly or else I should take my business elsewhere.

Two questions, then:

1) Has Dropbox said when this problem will be fixed?

2) Which competitor of Dropbox is the most intuitive for longtime Dropbox users?

Same problem here and similarly surprised to find out (now i know i'm not the only one) that it's still not been addressed. It's muscle memory to drag files to Dropbox this way, and it's frustrating every time it doesn't work as expected.

I suspect it's actually an Apple issue and not a Dropbox one. Although if you look at my reply above yours, you can see I found a workaround.

Yeah Joe M.6 - i went with that for now. Good suggestion.

I appreciate the workaround but I fear I'll lose track of where I've placed files. If it's "an Apple issue and not a Dropbox one," then Dropbox should say so. Have they offered any official explanation?

Please do this for me too. It is a total buzz kill that this feature has stopped working for me. I use this feature constantly and it is definitely causing me a problem and creating a lot of extra work.  This feature must be fixed ASAP!!!!!!

Don, Thanks for sharing,  copied and pasted this into terminal, but I get an error message:  

command not found: python

Any ideas for me?  Jan

that worked for me, thanks. easy fix.