Mac client continuously syncing with no file changes

Hi Hannah, thanks for the reply and the clarification. I've used selective sync to remove most of the folders from Dropbox on my MBP, I'm left with 53,208 files:

I have given the Dropbox client time to chew through these changes and the icon is no longer regularly showing the sync symbol. I am finding that your client is still using a lot of power when there's nothing to do, but it's nowhere near as regular as before:

It's no longer regularly jumping up to and over 200%. Now, it's just a steady 100% for about 5 minutes every 20 minutes or so, which still causes the laptop to heat up and the fans to spin, just not as hot and loud as before.

As a comparison, I've been testing Nextcloud for file syncing. Maybe it isn't as smart as the Dropbox client and doesn't need to do background work when no new syncing is needed, but it never causes my computer to heat up and the fans to spin 😕

I think using selective sync to remove folders from your local Dropbox folder is a bit of an extreme step to take to reduce the load of your client, but it has made things slightly better so I'll mark your answer as correct. Thank you all for your help.

Hi!

Thanks for pointing out this issue, @cgnerd, and for the suggested workaround, @Hannah. However, I don't agree with closing this topic...

We're facing the same issues, both before and after upgrading to macOS 12.3. It's also causing Dropbox to be slow, and the dropdown-menu doesn't show the Dropbox features... so we can't use "Send with Transfer", "Copy Dropbox link", etc. 

In our case, not being able to rely on SmartSync and having to switch off a number of folders through SelectiveSync, is very troublesome. F.e. as Executive Director of our architecture office, I need to be able to view and check all folders directly from the Finder, relying also on the Spotlight search capabilities. We're on Dropbox Business Advanced, paying a substantial amount of money, so we should be able to rely on Dropbox to work properly. If certain functionalities and services are offered, they should work fine. Moreover, these functionalities are some of the reasons why we opted for Dropbox instead of another application. If such functionalities are no longer working or will be discontinued in the future, we should be informed in due time, allowing us to reconsider our subscription.

This being said, I sincerely hope there is a proper solution coming very soon to resolve this issue.

Completely get where you're coming from Tomboo, I also have issues with the dropbox options not showing up on a right click (I usually have to right click three or four times before the Dropbox options appear) and the client generally being slow. I closed this issue because the problem didn't seem to be my use of the Dropbox client, it seems to be that the client is just hogging more resources than needed. I doubt a Dropbox developer will jump into this thread and assure us that improvements are on the way (look at how long we had to wait for native Apple silicon support). This is why I've been trialing Nextcloud 😔

I am also seeing Dropbox using around 70% of my CPU resources pretty continually, and it keeps eating up disk space even after designating a lot of files as online only. The dropbox folder takes up half of the total storage on the Macbook (500Gb), even after I used selective synch to reduce the folders I need to keep offline. I am advised by tech support that I can no longer designate my dropbox folder to an external drive, and this version of Macbook cannot increase the drive storage internally.

Dear rmundell,

As for the Dropbox taking up space: to our experience, this is a "virtual" problem, and Dropbox has a "solution" for it.

In your Settings on the Dropbox website, you can find a settings at the bottom of the first tab, called "Smart Sync update for Mac". The subtitle is the following "With this update, online-only files will no longer appear to take up hard drive space."

This solved the problem for us about Dropbox "using" a lot of storage space while it was actually not (because many files are online-only).

Hope that works for you!

(As for the CPU usage: still no actual solution, but switching off a series of folders via Selective Sync seems to tuned down the issue. To be monitored and confirmed...)

Thanks.

Yes I turned off a lot of folders to not synch on the Mac and by the following morning had regained 115GB. I'd still prefer to be able to synch all of my files to an external USB drive that I can have with me when I am out of Internet range. (I like to work from the boat, which is often offline.)

I would like to add that I am experiencing exactly the same problems with dropbox too. I have a new MacBookPro, running MacOS 12.3.1. My subscription is via my institution and is a business package.

I use online-only storage options heavily to preserve hard drive space.

Constant background syncing yet no files are being synced in the activity menu, high impact on battery life, high impact on CPU performance.

When this occurs, the dropbox menu items in the right-click context menu do not appear, meaning I cannot pull online only files back onto the hard drive.

I frequently just turn off syncing to preserve battery life and then let it sync when the laptop is idle.

I am interested in seeing if a solution can be found to this as well.

I’ve removed the accepted solution as it’s only a partial solution and others are having the same issue.

Just wanted to chime in here to say I'm experiencing the exact same issues as others have mentioned in this thread.

Running a 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (Intel i5 3.3GHz processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) on macOS 12.3.1 

Dropbox keeps fluctuating anywhere from 75% to 100% to 230% CPU usage, even with no file changes whatsoever.

The Dropbox sync could be completely finished, and yet the CPU usage is still off the charts. My MacBook fans are constantly spinning, and even if I close the lid on my MacBook Pro, it will go to sleep, but then I will hear the fans spin up again and continue to run for hours. I have to literally shut down my MacBook Pro to stop the fans & excessive CPU usage from Dropbox. 

I've tried all of the suggestions offered in the Dropbox Community, everything from the basics like restarting the Mac, to Force Quitting all Dropbox tasks in Activity Monitor, re-installing the Dropbox app, etc. Nothing seems to help.

Truly hope that Dropbox dev team will make fixing this a priority, as my team & I rely on using Dropbox every day, and it's causing a huge headache for all of us with Dropbox's excessive CPU usage slowing everything else down. The only "workaround" I can think of would be to completely quit the Dropbox app and not use it to sync files in the background, then turn it on at the end of the day to let Dropbox sync... but that completely defeats the purpose of paying the huge monthly fees that we do for Dropbox Advanced, and eliminates any possibility of collaborating on files, plus risks file sync conflicts / corruption if two people were to work on the same file while sync is disabled, etc. 

Please Dropbox do whatever you can to fix this issue asap.

In the meantime, the very least you could do is please have someone from your customer support team reach out to everyone in this thread and give us regular updates on your progress, so that we know how much longer we're going to have to wait for a resolution.

Otherwise we're likely going to have to look into taking our business elsewhere, and that would be a shame for everyone.

Hey everyone, Happy Friday! 

In order for the team to be able to look into this and investigate, I'm going to need from you to contact them directly.

You should be able to do so by visiting this page here. If any of you face any issues, let me know so I can chime in and help.

Once you have your ticket numbers, reply back to me here so I can locate them on my system.

Thanks a bunch! 

Dear Megan,

We reported the issue to Dropbox Support, as recommended by you.

Ticket #16986333.

Kinds regards,

Tom.

Hi TomBoo, I hope you're doing well!

Awesome! I just located the ticket and passed my comments there. Hold tight, and an agent will be with you shortly. 

Thank you!

I'm not sure if anyone else is noticing a difference lately, but I have. It's hard to tell if a software update has fixed things (as updates are installed in the background), or if it took a couple of days after removing most of my local folders for the client to settle down, but things are a lot better now, Dropbox idles around 1% or less most of the time. I could turn on a bulk of my folders again to see if things go back to where they were, but I'm a bit tied up right now. I'm using version 148.4.4519 of the client. If someone from Dropbox could confirm a software update has fixed the issue, I'll mark this thread with an accepted answer.

I've noticed this too. A big improvement.