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Forum Discussion
Syncing icons on the files in the Dropbox folder have changed
Hello The Finder Extension Icons indicating whether a file or folder is Online Only or Available Offline are showing up in my Finder, however, the statuses are incorrect. For instance a folder that ...
Just for clarity for anyone skimming through... when I reached out to Dropbox support about the icon issue, this was the explanation they gave:
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Dropbox Support Response
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We’ve recently updated our sync icons to give you a more accurate idea of what sync state your files and folders are in.
For example:
- A file with the available offline icon
green background with a white tick) means that the file is downloaded to your PC/Mac. Files in this state have been made available offline by right clicking the file and selecting Make available offline. - A file with the available icon (
white background with a green tick), means that the file is downloaded to your PC/Mac. Files in this state have been made available by opening the file with a double click or using a 3rd party app. - A file with the online-only icon (
grey background with a white cloud), means that the file is online-only and is merely a placeholder file which takes up close to zero bytes on your PC/Mac
A folder’s sync icon will depend on what files are contained within that folder.
For example:
- If a folder contains at least 1 online-only file then the folder’s sync icon will be online-only
- If a folder contains zero online-only files and at least 1 available file then its sync icon will be the available icon
- If a folder contains only available offline files then its sync icon will be available offline
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Thank you for sharing the explanation from Dropbox Support rusdom
This issue makes more sense now.
However, the new system does not make any sense.
The Old System makes complete sense and it was easy to identify the state of all files and folders:
Cloud = All Files and Folders Online Only
White Circle Green Check = Mixed Online Only and Available Offline
Solid Green Circle White Check = All Files and Folders Available Offline
New System:
1. Having a Cloud Icon on a folder that contains 999 files that are Available Offline and 1 file that is Online Only is not helpful at all and makes no sense.
2. The White Circle Green Check was a great indicator of mixed status files/folders. In the new system, knowing that there are zero Online Only files in these folders is not helpful at all. If there are zero Online Only files, the previously used Solid Green Circle White Check should be used.
Yeah, the old system was really perfect in the way it solved dropbox's biggest downfall, ie. disk space. That's the one thing people would consistently bring up to me as an excuse not to use Dropbox. But then I'd tell them about smart syncing and the (old) icon system, and that would win them over. That was the same thing that won me over at the start of Covid, and why we went ahead with moving my company's entire production onto Dropbox. The old icons were such a brilliant, simple, elegant system that solved Dropbox's biggest pain point. I don't understand why they'd undo that. They're costing their customers untold hours of extra time and headache.
