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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 contains files that are both Online Only files and Available Offline files is showing a cloud icon, when it should be showing a white circle with a green checkmark and green outline. I think the Finder Extension is confused. Is there a way to reset the Finder Extension so the icons show correctly without changing the Online Only or Available Offline settings that I have for my files/folders? I do not want to change the statuses of my files/folders, I just want the icons to indicate the statuses correctly. Thank you.
Mac 10.14.6
Dropbox 152.4.4880
163 Replies
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leandrosilva thanks for sharing! Hopefully enough people reach out to Dropbox for it to make a difference.
Latest feedback from Drobpox:
"Hello, thank you very much for that.
We are aware of what our users have been saying about the new sync icons.
Dropbox is always looking for ways to improve for our users. We always want to make things easier and simpler. We'll make sure your feedback is given to the engineering team who look after Dropbox on people's desktop and app. They are always looking for ways to improve the Dropbox experience.
Thanks again for reaching out to us. Have a great week."
Dropbox recently changed (aka ruined) the usability of its formerly-useful Smart Sync finder icons.
CLOUD ICON - this icon used to show up when a folder was 100% online-only. Very useful - you could see that a folder was there, and not eating up local drive space. But now it means only that "any little part" of a folder is online-only. This ruins its usefulness, because if I’m trying to clear up hard-drive space, I can’t tell which Cloud folders are the “offending” ones that may secretly possess a gigantic file, deep inside a folder, that is eating up tons of local drive space. With this Dropbox icon change, the only way to make sure you are freeing up hard drive space is to constantly throw your *entire* Dropbox into online-only mode. It makes the whole system kind of useless.WHITE WITH GREEN CHECK ICON - the white-styled green check icon used to represent folders that were a mixture of online-only and locally-downloaded. This was useful, because you could quickly see folders that might contain downloaded files, and navigate to downloaded or cloud-only files. But the new version of the white/green icon only tells me if an App has opened a file, instead of me choosing to download it. Basically a waste, not useful, and confusing as it functionally double-up with the fully-green checkmark icon described below.DARK GREEN CHECK ICON - this dark green icon remains effective because it's clear: it means a file or folder is in the cloud AND is also fully downloaded to your computer.If people want more icon options, Dropbox should make more icons. But to kill off the effective old icons and re-define them in a useless way is bad for businesses that manage a lot of media. It will force my business to move to another cloud service if it's not fixed.William F.5 I believe Dropbox is already aware of the situation.
The problem might be related with the time necessary to redo this update.
This becomes even more relevant after the announcement two months ago of significant price increases in our business subscriptions during this year.
What surprises me the most is that someone at Dropbox proposed this 'good' idea and the rest of the staff or the people who decide go ahead with it. Nobody inside questioned why, nor the advantage for its users?
Let's make this update because it will improve the user experience and help them do something (which no one can explain)... instead, let's deliver a 'concept version' of what Smart Sync would be.
Does anyone at Dropbox actually read this forum? This change seems universally despised, but there's no way of knowing whether it will be rolled back or not. I think we would all like to know. If this is a permanent change, I will likely end my subscription and go back to using my free university Box Sync account. Box has plenty of issues of its own, but at least I can understand what the sync icons mean.
"If a folder contains at least 1 online-only file then the folder’s sync icon will be online-only "
How does that make sense? How is it better for users to see a folder is online-only when the majority of files are downloaded and availble?
Please rollback to the previous system 😞
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.
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.And THAT's the problem. The meaning of icons has changed in a way that does NOT tell us anything useful. A cloud for a folder that has a mix of online only and available files is NOT USEFUL. And I thought the mixed status symbol (a folder with available and online only files) was a green line in the white circle with a green rim -- where has that gone??????????????? I actually pay for this program, so expect that changes won't screw it up like this.
