Dropbox folder bounces in the dock on Mac when syncing.

Hey izaacmp, let's jump right into this! 

Was that always the case & behavior when it came to your Dropbox folder, or is this something that started happening recently? 

Would you mind clarifying the version of the Dropbox desktop app that you're using on your end too? 

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there! 

Thanks Megan for following up 🙂

I only recently re-added the Dropbox folder to my dock about a week ago, and its been occurring the whole time. I believe I also had it in my dock 1 year or so ago without this issue, but I can't be certain.

I'm using v209.4.3661 on macOS 15.0.1 on the Apple Silicon/ARM platform.

Thanks for the heads up izaacmp! 😀

I did some digging, and this might be related to your OS, and the settings there rather than Dropbox, but in any case we'll look into it to see what we can find.

Have you tried turning off "animate opening applications" in System Preferences, by any chance? 

Thanks for looking into this. I tried your suggestion and I really thought it might work—but it didn't.

However, it did have me thinking a bit more about the interaction between the Dropbox App, the Dock, and the Dropbox Folder. The Downloads folder on the Mac does the same animation anytime something from Safari finishes downloading to the folder. I assume there is a system event that is triggered when the Dropbox App finishes syncing a file. There should be a way for Dropbox to not trigger this animation though. I'm now looking for manual overrides.

Hi izaacmp,

 Thanks for getting in touch. 

We've shared this with our team to investigate this issue, and we'll let you know as soon as we have an update. 

Hello!

I'm an engineer at Dropbox. Would you be able to record and share a video of the problem? If there is an action that leads to it happening (eg add content on another computer or on the web so it syncs down onto the machine) that would be helpful to include as well. Thanks!

Hi Peterlvilim,

Thank you for responding.

Whenever a "online-only" file is synced/activated/downloaded on my computer, the DropBox folder icon in my dock will bounce. Sometimes, the folder randomly bounces even when nothing is being synced (according to the status in the Dropbox menu bar applet). For instance, while writing this very paragraph, the icon in my dock representing the Dropbox folder bounced randomly, and the Dropbox client said "everything is up to date" both before and after it bounced.

In video linked here, I have reproduced one condition that always causes the icon to bounce: opening an online-only file (or previewing a file in quick-look). As soon as the data for the file has synced/downloaded, the icon will bounce to presumably indicate the file is ready.

The scenario I recorded, while not desired, isn't quite as frustrating as another scenario I frequently encounter: I will be working on a task such as writing a document when randomly, and without any files being synced, the dropbox folder icon will bounce on my dock interrupting my focus.

Another condition in which it can occur is if Dropbox is syncing files in the background—like when its syncing data that was uploaded from another computer—it may bounce in my dock each time it finishes syncing a file. Multiply this by a hundred files and the icon will bounce 100 times. Unfortunately I wasn't able to replicate this scenario on video either.

I'm using Dropbox Desktop v209.4.3661 on macOS 15.0.1 on the Apple Silicon/ARM platform.

This happens to me as well. I see the dock bounce on my Mac every time I modify a file on a different device in an app that uses Dropbox to sync. For example, anytime I edit a note in Notability or add a password to my password manager. I'm running Sonoma 14.4.

I should mention that this includes very minor edits to notes in Notability, or even just opening a note. So it's quite bothersome to see the bounce happen every time. And I can confirm this did NOT use to happen. Certainly didn't happen before the transition a year or two ago to storing cloud files in /Users/[username]/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox.

And disabling the dock bounce entirely is not an acceptable workaround, because I want to see the bounce for other situations (like when a file finishes downloading to ~/Downloads).

Hey camall3n,

Thank you for reaching out.

We understand how important this is to you, and I wanted to let you know that our team is on it and is reviewing this.

We’ll keep you posted as soon as we have any updates.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

I think it must be OS 15 (Sequoia). I recently updated and am having the bouncing dropbox folder issue for the first time.