Dropbox silently moved my Dropbox folder and enrolled me in a beta program without asking!

OK so I'm wondering if this is related to when I changed my Dropbox email address 11 days ago on 3 February. I did that on the Dropbox website. The Dropbox app on iOS immediately picked up the new email address, but the Dropbox app on my computer (running macOS Sonoma 14.2.1) did not. In order to fix this, I signed out and signed back in again with the macOS Dropbox app. Surprisingly, this meant I had to re-apply the Dropbox app settings. But I thought I set them to be the same as they were before.

If this is related to what happened, it still seems crazy. Simply changing your email address should leave such a trail of devastation behind!

Hi jmsgwd, and thanks for your post. Let’s have a look. 

Can you please clarify what’s the exact app version that you see now, when hovering over the small Dropbox icon in your menu bar? 

In general, you need to manually enable the early releases option, so that you’re included in the beta releases in the future. 

I’m also sorry to hear about your updates. From your description, it seems like your Dropbox app was updated to the macOS on File Provider version, when you relinked/signed back into the Dropbox app.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Thanks for your response Nancy.

The Dropbox app version I'm running on macOS  is 194.2.2179.

Yes the information on macOS on File Provider info is somewhat helpful. But it raises as many questions as it answers:

• Why was there no notification or warning that this change was coming?
• How did the feature get enabled without my consent?
• Why did it create a separate copy of my Dropbox data in a new location, and leave the original Dropbox folder in the original location containing a snapshot of my data at the time the change happened?

There has to be a single source of truth! Of course I'm going to assume my Dropbox folder is still my Dropbox folder unless I'm told otherwise. My original Dropbox folder is still there, in the same location, with the same name, containing all my data, and with the same special icon in Finder. And yet it's not my Dropbox folder any more! It's a non-synced duplicate my data, which is now a fork of the real data - and I now need to figure out how to merge together 11 days worth of changes I made separately on different devices.  I need help in resolving this mess 😠.

Thanks for your response, jmsgwd, and for the feedback as well.

The updated Dropbox for macOS on File Provider experience is not really a feature, but a change in the usability of the app.

It was developed to adhere to the requirement as set out by Apple and to ensure the best possible experience for our Mac users long into the future.

Regarding your issue with the two Dropbox folders, just to confirm, if you go to the "sync" tab in your preferences, what's the location of the syncing Dropbox folder?

Also, what is the sync status of the app, when you hover over your Dropbox icon?

Could it be that the update is not finished yet?

Hi Hannah, 

It doesn't make any difference whether it's a "feature" or "change in usability", the point is it's a breaking change in behaviour, and I should have been notified. And my data should not have been forked into 2 separate copies as a result of this change being silently rolled out.

I have no doubt the change is needed in the long-term, I'm not complaining about that. The issue is with the rollout.

In Preferences > Sync tab, it says:

Dropbox folder location

This version of macOS requires Dropbox folders to be stored here:

/Users/<username>/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox

That is not what it said before - last time I looked here it said the location was "/Users/<username>/studio/Dropbox".

The sync status says "Your files are up to date". When I changed my email address 11 days ago and signed out and signed back in to the Dropbox app, it only took about 5 minutes to re-sync about 500 GB of data. On that basis I assumed everything was fine, and continued working as normal.

The issue is that my original Dropbox folder is still in the original location:

/Users/<username>/studio/Dropbox

And this folder contains a complete separate copy of my data. I know it's a separate copy because all the changes I made in macOS over the last 11(?) days only exist in this folder, and they don't exist in the new Dropbox folder (or in the Dropbox cloud). Those changes have not synced to Dropbox, even though the app says my sync status is up to date. It appears that my original Dropbox folder has now become a local-only macOS folder, without me knowing it.

By contrast, the new Dropbox folder under "/Users/<username>/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox" contains all the changes made in the last 11(?) days on my OTHER devices, which have synced via the Dropbox cloud into this folder on my Mac. 

I didn't realize until today that I now have 2 Dropbox folders. And each one now has a different set of changes that I made over the last 11(?) days.

So just to be clear, there are 2 Dropbox folders, each containing an independent copy of my data:

• /Users/<username>/studio/Dropbox - this copy includes all the changes made in the last 11 days on my Mac. This has now become a local-only folder which is NOT syncing.
• /Users/<username>/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox - this copy includes all the changes made on my OTHER devices during this time, which been syncing via the Dropbox cloud back to my Mac in this folder

Please advise on next steps - thanks.

EDIT: Updated this post to reflect the fact that my original Dropbox folder location is in fact /Users/<username>/studio/Dropbox/, and not /Users/<username>/Dropbox as originally stated.

Tagging Hannah & Nancy in case you didn't see my reply.

I understand where you're coming from, jmsgwd, and rest assured that your comments have been passed along to our team.

Have you restarted the computer or the Dropbox app at all, after you noticed the two Dropbox folders, to see if it helps?

Thanks Hannah. I really appreciate your assistance and the fact that you passed these comments on to your team. 

I checked to see when the last reboot occurred, and it was 41 days ago - so I just did another reboot. Following this, nothing has changed as far as I can tell. I still have two Dropbox folders with the same behaviour described above. 

I also noticed a small error in my earlier posts. The actual location of my original Dropbox folder is in fact /Users/<username>/studio/Dropbox/, and not /Users/<username>/Dropbox as originally stated. This shouldn't make any difference, but anyway I have edited my earlier posts to reflect this.

Hi again, jmsgwd! I’m afraid that, in this case, the only option is to manually merge everything and move/copy the updated files from the old Dropbox folder to the new one under Locations. This way, your files should sync to our servers and your web account/linked devices.

Nancy I appreciate your response but this is not enough. I've been a Dropbox user since 2012 and a paying Dropbox Pro customer since 2017. Offering a solution is great, but I need answers.

Specifically I'd like to understand the following:

1. What was supposed to happen? Surely the engineers who designed this change must have a plan in mind for how it would be rolled out in a non-disruptive manner. How was the change intended to be deployed seamlessly, without forking users' data into two separate copies? What was the planned approach? How was this meant to work?
2. What went wrong? So many things went wrong. Failure to notify me that this change was coming. Failure to obtain my consent before enrolling me into a new beta program. Failure to inform me that the sync model had changed. Failure to inform me that my Dropbox folder had moved. Failure to maintain a single source of truth and have a single copy of my data on macOS. How could this change have so many failures on so many levels?
3. What are you doing to make sure it won't happen again? What are the lessons learned at Dropbox to make sure this kind of disruption won't happen again in future?

I'd like this issue to be escalated to your engineering leadership. I'd like to have answers to the above questions. I am so unhappy about this.

When it comes to fixing the issue, your suggestion makes sense but it raises further questions:

1. If I merge my changes into the "new" Dropbox folder, will I still be enabled in a "Beta" program? I never consented to be in a Beta program. I want to use use fully-tested production-ready software ONLY.
2. Why do all the files in the new Dropbox location have cloud icons beside them? It looks like they're not downloaded locally. I just tried turning off Wi-Fi to see if these files open, and they don't. So these files are currently only in the cloud. They're downloaded dynamically on-demand.

This is a seriously breaking change! If I switch to the new Dropbox folder, this will mean:

• My Time Machine backups will no longer contain my data, since all the local files are now empty cloud icons
• My ad-hoc local drive backups using SuperDuper will no longer contain my data, since all the local files are now empty cloud icons
• My continuous/versioned cloud backups using Arq Backup no longer contain my data, since all the local files are now empty cloud icons

It's crucial to understand that I have multiple levels of backup in place to ensure my data is adequately protected - and ALL these backup solutions assume that my data exists locally on my computer. I'm only using Dropbox for one purpose: to sync my data between devices. But ALL my data must continue to exist locally.

If Dropbox now decides to replace my files with empty cloud icons that only download dynamically/on-demand, then my entire data backup regime stops working! Everything becomes broken! This is not a solution. My data exists locally on my machine and everything starts from there. The sync service (Dropbox) only exists to sync my data between devices.

If you can no longer guarantee that my data stays on my device, then I can no longer be a Dropbox user. I need my data to exist on my device in order for all the other backup processes (Time Machine, ad-hoc local drive backups, Arq cloud backups) to continue working.

I'll stop there but I really need someone to THINK THIS THROUGH and understand the impact of these changes and give me a real solution that actually works!