Dropbox syncing takes forever sometimes. And sync check-marks keep disappearing.

Hey Dennis_Zuiderlicht, let's jump right into this! 

The first thing we want to check, is the OS you're using on your Mac, along with the Dropbox version that you have installed there. 

You can find this by hovering your mouse over the little Dropbox icon, next to your WiFi icon, on your menu bar.

We need to do this, to make sure you're not using a Beta version of our app, which could be causing this. Have you also ensured that there's no firewall, antivirus or perhaps a VPN/proxy setting that might be causing this?

If I were you, I'd also check the app's bandwidth settings, to make sure it's not limited, in regards to the app's speed, and how fast it syncs content.

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there! 

Hi Megan,

Thank you for your reply! 

OS: macOS Ventura 13.4.1 (as of today up-to-date)

Dropbox: 178.3.4678

I did actually have Beta features enabled apparently. I just turned them off.

However I also checked with some of my colleagues who are having more issues with this than I am, they have Early releases disabled.

As for bandwidth, I both have the download en upload rate speed limit disabled. 

Hey Dennis_Zuiderlicht, happy Monday! 

Thanks for all the info! 

Now, keep in mind that the 178.3.4678 is indeed a Beta version of our app, not the stable one. You'd need to go into your account settings on the Dropbox website and turn Early releases off. 

Once you do this, you'd also need to re-install the app again. Can you give this one a go? 

Hey Megan,

I reinstalled Dropbox, and after a long wait, I had no success either. Nor does one of my colleagues with whom I tried to follow the same steps. 

Though I wonder, we have about 80 TB in our Dropbox. Some of the massive folders (12 and 19 TB) are synced to our Macs as well. They are essential to us and it's convenient for us to have them synced (online-only). Though I can imagine that Dropbox might constantly need to index all those files might cause some delays and require processing time (or whatever happens in the background). 

Hey Jay, most definitely. When I reinstalled Dropbox, the Dropbox icon in the top right said it was indexing about 1.4 million files. 

And even though it doesn't matter but most of those are online-only. 

Edit: I found a Dropbox article about a 300K files syncing soft cap, where depending on your hardware it may or may not work properly. 

Together with one of my colleagues, I've unsynced our entire archive with thousands of files. I will test and see if it works better now. 🙂

Thank you, Dennis! 

Keep an eye out, and if you notice any inconsistencies make sure to let us know, and we'll happily look closely into this. 

Hi Megan and Jay, turning off millions of files that were synced to my Mac made a day and night difference. Even while Dropbox is still busy with lots of stuff in the background, everything works as I'd expect. My colleague did the same test with me also has the same experience that everything works much better now.

Thanks, both of you for your help.

This is what we like to hear -or read in our case- Dennis_Zuiderlicht!

If you need anything else, we'll be one post away. 😎

Hey hey!

I have exactly the same problem as you have described. I was wondering how do you un sync and if that effect anything?

All the best,

Matjaz