All Dropbox Finder sync icons disappeared after updating to macOS Tahoe 26.2.

hi Peeps, just letting you know that it only just happens recently. Unsure when, but I remembered even a week ago with macos Tahoe, I was still able to see the icon. But then yesterday it's no longer there (very frustrating). Good thing I tried duplicating this on my son's macbook by downloading dropbox, and guess what. same deal! 

Currently the only fix for me is to update my dropbox to "on file provider" which I USED TO HATE A LOT. 

I prefer the old Dropbox legacy tbh. But the GOOD THING about dropbox "on file provider" is that I can now see a thumbnail even if the files are offline.

The cons though, when you copy pasted a folder with this new dropbox, it WONT have a blue sync folder next to it when uploading and it wont give you a green tick when its completed. Instead it will just look like a normal folder not knowing if they're fully synced or not. The only way to caught up with sync is just to hover to the dropbox icon to see whether its up to date or not. 

I couldn't agree more. Hopefully someone here at Dropbox is monitoring this conversation. A person from our organization with Admin access is planning to submit a ticket if this problem is still persisting tomorrow. Without the icons present in the Finder window, I've resorted to right-clicking a file/folder and selecting File Info... in the Dropbox contextual window. At least it's a way to get some kind of status verification on a single file and will read "Available Offline" if sync'd. Not so helpful or specific if you select File Info on a folder that contains a mix of online-offline files. Then it just reports "Mixed state".

Med54 thanks for clarifying. The fact that this is now showing up on Sequoia as well as Tahoe and Sonoma pretty much confirms this isn’t an OS specific issue at all. It really does point to the recent Dropbox desktop update for macOS. My work setup is very similar to yours we’re also on a large Dropbox Business account (10tb shared across lots of users) with most files set to online only locally. Like you I don’t appear to be using File Provider and I’m not even sure whether I was before the update. I assume I’m on legacy sync now because Dropbox won’t let me upgrade to File Provider likely due to the file count (we’re well over the 500,000 limit). What’s confusing and frustrating is that Dropbox’s own documentation suggests that Finder icons should still appear on both legacy sync and File Provider so it shouldn’t matter which sync engine we’re on. Yet here we all are, syncing working fine, context menus present but no visual status indicators at all. Hopefully as more people confirm this across different macOS versions and both personal and business accounts it becomes clear this is a wider issue and gets proper attention from Dropbox. At the moment it’s making a normal work day far harder than it needs to be.

consettprint - in regards to your question about my wife's Mac - she is only signed in to her and my shared personal Dropbox account which we sync across on our own personal computers, iPhones, iPad. And I mistakenly said early she is running Sonoma, but in fact she's running Sequoia. The icons have disappeared in her Finder, windows, too. My work computer is signed into a Dropbox business account that has over 10TB of data shared across dozens of users. At least one other person that I know of on this account is experiencing this issue (running Sequoia 15.7.3). Apparently we're not using File Provider at this time, and I don't really understand what that is or if it's necessary. This is what I see in Dropbox's Preferences > Sync sidebar window.

Lordfader welcome to the club although I wish it was under better circumstances. Thanks for sending over your issue too. What you’ve described matches exactly what the rest of us are seeing which makes it impossible to manage online only vs offline files properly. The fact that syncing works, files appear on other machines but there are no cloud /tick icons and no context menu options, really points to something breaking at the Finder integration layer rather than a basic sync issue. And you’re not alone we’re seeing this across multiple Macs, multiple macOS versions (Tahoe and Sonoma), internal drives and external drives and across different Dropbox accounts. It must have veen awkward in front of a client especially when Dropbox is meant to be a core collaboration tool. Several of us rely on those icons daily to avoid mistakes when hundreds of files are changing constantly. Hopefully Dropbox staff can see from this thread now that this isn’t an isolated setup issue and needs looking at as a wider regression, particularly around legacy sync/File Provider behaviour. 

Med54 thanks for explaining yes exactly this. Everything appears to be syncing but without the icons there’s no way to visually confirm offline vs online only status which defeats the whole purpose when you’re actively managing large working folders. Just to add another point I’ve just spoken to someone else in our company who’s on macOS Sonoma 14.5 and the exact same thing has happened to her Dropbox tool. What’s strange is that hers seemed to stop showing icons at the same time mine did right after I updated even though she didn’t update her OS at that point. She is connected to my Dropbox account. Out of curiosity is your wife’s Mac connected to the same Dropbox account or is it a completely separate one? Sorry for all the questions I’m just trying to understand whether this is tied to a specific Dropbox app update rolling out across linked devices or something account level that’s being triggered because at the moment it’s a complete nightmare for work.

Hi everyone.

I'm experiencing the EXACT same issues as everyone else on this thread.  This week I had to do a complete Music Studio upgrade for a film composer who was installing a new Mac Studio M4 as the main hub of their studio. 

After installing OSX Tahoe and getting the latest updates the first thing I did was install Dropbox as my client works with multiple collaborators.....globally.  They have a 3TB limit and had provided me with a 4TB external drive so I could move Dropbox onto it. Heres the steps I took.

1. Installed the latest version of Dropbox
2. Synced ALL folders to the Mac Studio HD - Online only!  NOTE at this stage there were no Cloud icons
3. Tried to Move the Dropbox folder to an External Disk, at this point there was no option to move the folder because of the NEW File Provider.
4. Quit Dropbox, re-opened it, relinked and went to the advanced settings and turned off File Provider.
5. Moved Dropbox to the External Disk.  Move was successful and the "Your files are up to date" was on the bottom of the dropdown menu on the DB icon in the task bar.
6. After moving Dropbox to the external disk there were still no icons, no dropdown options (View on Dropbox.com, Make available offline, Manage folder access, File info etc.)
7. Went onto the DB app and added a TEST folder to see if it was Syncing.  Test folder appeared on the Desktop version.

So at this stage the DB is syncing but there is no option or way to make any file offline.

So I'm presuming the issue seems to be with OSX Tahoe and this new File Provider update.....which IMO is just ridiculous and pointless.

Also it was somewhat embarrassing whilst doing this in front of a client in the first hour of being there.

Please advise

Frustrating, yes. Everything else seems to be functioning normally. It appears that files that I and others in our organization are adding, deleting, moving, or updating are syncing. But like you and your organization, I have hundreds of files/folders that I often need to be able to switch between Make Available Offline and Make Online-Only, and without the presence of the icons, that status is not apparent, which is the whole point of the icons. 

That’s really helpful Med54 thank you. That timing lines up exactly with what I’m seeing too. In my case the Tahoe update happened at the same time so I suspect Dropbox updated in the background too and I just didn’t notice it which makes it look like an OS issue when it’s probably the Dropbox update that coincided with it. What you’ve described with the cache clean bringing the icons back temporarily and then losing them again on restart really does sound like something isn’t reregistering properly on the Dropbox side anymore possibly a preference or cache that gets rebuilt incorrectly each time. The fact that it’s now happening on both Tahoe and Sonoma points away from macOS itself and more toward a regression in 240.4.8609 especially since the redesigned menu appeared at the same time. I really hope this gets fixed soon because it’s genuinely difficult to work without the sync icons. I have multiple people using the same Dropbox folders and hundreds of files going in every day and without the Finder icons it’s really hard to tell which files I’ve created or updated for my part of the job versus what’s just arrived from someone else. Thanks again it’s reassuring (in a frustrating way) to know it’s not just one machine or one setup.

I think it was in the past week or so after the redesigned Dropbox menu appeared, which I'm assuming was part of the automatic update to 240.4.8609. Running the Maintenance app cache clean, system cleaning, etc. brought the icons back, but the fix was only temporary. Every restart since then has reverted back to having no sync icons. I've run the Maintenance app a few times again, but it's not correcting the problem this time. I think there's some hidden cache file, or preference file somewhere that needs to reset or deleted, but not sure where to start with that. Your issue with the Tahoe update seems to be coincidentally timed to the Dropbox update.