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Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
3 years ago
Solved

Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users

In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability.   https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    2 years ago
    Hi Everybody,
     
    We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article. 
     
    Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
    • This beta is only available to US-based users
    • You must be on macOS 15 beta
    • You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
     
    Please let me know if you have any further questions!
KzDbx's avatar
KzDbx
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
3 years ago

Hello everyone. Thank you for your feedback.


We understand that this is a significant pain point for you and your teams that rely on having Dropbox sync on external drives.
Currently, the File Provider API only supports your Dropbox folder in ~/Library/CloudStorage. We are actively working on a solution to support external drives on the updated Dropbox for macOS. While we work to implement a solution, customers who have their Dropbox folder on an external drive will not be migrated to the updated macOS experience. External drive support will continue to work as usual on your current experience.


We will keep you updated when we have more details to share.

CaptainClean's avatar
CaptainClean
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

Is there any progress on this front? It's been 9 months since this has been posted.

 

Many professionals rely on having their massive files on external drives. It just seems like a totally wrong decision from Dropbox to rely on the File Provider API. Why not code your own without this limitation?

    • CaptainClean's avatar
      CaptainClean
      Explorer | Level 4
      3 years ago

      @ben_k – Thanks, but it answers nothing, to be honest. It just states what we already know. Files will reside in ~/Library/CloudStorage. Why is Microsoft able to find a solution but not Dropbox?

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