Forum Discussion

fort's avatar
fort
New member | Level 2
8 years ago
Solved

High CPU usage even when not syncing or indexing

For the past couple of days, Dropbox has been consistently using around 30% of my CPU, when not syncing or indexing anything (i.e., the menu bar drop down says `Up to date`). Any idea why this might be happening, and what I can do to get Dropbox to idle properly?

I'm on a MacBook Air, running macOS 10.13.6 and Dropbox 58.4.92.

Thanks.

desktop
Mac
sync

64 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
Show More
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hi megawhite, the amount of RAM and CPU usage can vary at times. 

     

    Could you let us know what processor you're using, and the total amount of RAM on your machine?

  • megawhite's avatar
    megawhite
    Collaborator | Level 9
    3 years ago

    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3740QM CPU @ 2.70GHz

    16GB

     

    It is only fairly recently that DB has been hammering the CPU every day for no apparent reason, roughly a couple of weeks ago it started.  Yesterday I ticked all Dropbox.exe processes in Resource Monitor and looked at the disk usage tab.  No files were being shown as being accessed.

    I am a software developer BTW.

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    How many files do you have in your Dropbox folder approximately on the local machine?

     

    Are all the files local, online-only, or some in between?

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Do you have any proxy, VPN, firewall, security software, or even ISP/router settings that could be restricting traffic to the following Dropbox domains?

  • megawhite's avatar
    megawhite
    Collaborator | Level 9
    3 years ago

    I have not implemented any blocking on my home network or firewall.  Using Windows Defender.  Dropbox expected functionality is fine.

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Thanks for the info. Could you try reinstalling the app without uninstalling it first using this link?

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Yes, we're simply reinstalling it while it's installed, just to repair any potential issues in the program itself. All settings will remain the same.

  • megawhite's avatar
    megawhite
    Collaborator | Level 9
    3 years ago

    Hi, I looked at all my DB settings, uninstalled, re-installed.  It's still consuming a lot of RAM ~500MB just to keep 20k files in sync:

     

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!