Syncing icons on the files in the Dropbox folder have changed

rusdom no worries!

I still just can't understand why Dropbox did this. And nothing I've heard from Dropbox comes close to explaining it.

It's like Dropbox was a world class runner... and then decided to break its own leg... and actually thought breaking its leg would help to run faster. Mind boggling.

dbox_ Can we get a response to this issue, why this decision was made, and how Dropbox is handling it now? I know we'd all really appreciate that, as the only reason any of us is as frustrated as we are is because we really do like the Dropbox product and the old sync icon system so much. 

rusdom dbox_ Agreed!

We're all waiting for a situation point regarding this subject dbox_ 

Dropbox staff made it pretty clear to me that they don't have plans to change it back  -- at least that's how I took it when I asked if they were considering going back and how soon that decision might be made because my plan renewal was coming up, and they responded by giving me the link with directions for closing my account!

I wasted the entire afternoon checking out Onedrive. Don't do it. Icons are basically the same as the new Dropbox ones, but without the weird opened by another app stuff. And they have lots of options for handling versioning. 

But if you want to be able to share files between computers Onedrive automatically grabs your doc, photos, and desktop folders on your C drive and moves them into Onedrive! It says you can stop it from doing that, but it took mine anyway when I went back in to check it. And if you try to take them out of Onedrive and put them back where they belong, it deletes them.  It deletes your original photos. And if they were saved to the cloud or still syncing, it permanently deletes them. (Nice, huh?) I lost almost all my desktop links and a bunch of preset, title, and other files from photo and editing programs. Mostly stuff that can be replaced because I keep my actual working catalogues elsewhere, but really irritating and will probably take many more hours to restore to fully working order. (Why editing programs stick catalogues, presets, and templates in "photos" on the C drive -- a drive I don't use, so don't include in my backup -- is a separate issue.)  I never actually got the sharing function to work either, but I think I know what the issue was.

So now I'm p*ssed off at both Dropbox and Onedrive. Maybe I'll just go back to using portable SSDsfor big stuff like I used to do. Dropbox used to work pretty well - it had syncing issues, but I could easily see where it screwed up before and straighten it out. Now it's almost impossible with my deep file structure.

Anyway, despite the pricing and the fact that Onedrive seems like a a good replacement, I'd avoid it unless you want to just let it load whatever it wants or are starting completely fresh and can set up a file structure that really restricts what it automatically grabs. 

I've got three more options to check before my Dropbox plan is up for renewal. I'll let you all know if I find anything that works well. And I'd love some recommendations. 

Thanks cindy t.3 - my brother swears by pCloud. I had actually convinced him to move over to dropbox - but I put the brakes on that before he made the switch, and I’m going to test out pCloud with him and see if this works better for my company.

One new piece of information: I had one dropbox rep tell me the icon switch only happened on Mac, and that it’s Apple’s fault and Dropbox is ”considering” fixing it. I was skeptical of this explanation because the definition of the icons also seems to have changed on Dropbox’s help page, but maybe it explains why the cloud icon is no longer usable (since that definition is the same)? Does anyone here use PC ? Can someone corroborate this story?

I'm on PCs - both Windows 10, a desktop and a pretty new Surface. So, NO, it is not Apple's fault. And, as you noted, the info on icons both posted and sent to me by "support" have made it very clear that the icons have changed.

File this one under completely useless and unwanted interface "enhancements". 

No one:

DropBox dev team: Hey let's completely change the way sync icons work. Sure we could try to improve sync speed and reliability but that's a lot of work. Instead we'll just make some minor code changes that cause sync icons to display in a completely unintuitive way and call it an enhancement. Should we bother asking users if this would be a desired change? Ha ha ha ha ha, of course not. We'll just push it out with no warning. 

It's really astonishing that such a useless change that has such a a major impact on the usability of their flagship product somehow made it through the numerous checks and code reviews required to get into a final release. It's actually worse than useless because it removes functionality that was there before and worked as desired. On top of that it creates confusion around something that has always been simple and straight forward.

Please revert to the previous sync icon scheme.