2025 sparked some incredible conversations across our community 👩💻. Discover the highlights and see what’s ahead in 2026.
Forum Discussion
Dropbox icon with checkbox white interior remains a mystery.
Megan from the DropBox staff offered some help to an earlier post entitled "Dropbox icon and folder status on a Mac” but despite my replies, the discussion went dead seven days ago. I still have outstanding questions and would like to revive the discussion. I have selected the preference that all files and folders be available off-line on my primary MacBook, however, I have a mix of checkboxes, that is to say both kinds… green interior and a white check mark and white interior with a green checkmark.
Below is the explanation link that Megan supplied, but there's no mention of the check mark with white interior, which was puzzling because I had seen but lost another page earlier that included that in the explanations.
In looking at this article about syncing icons and reference was made to the DropBox desktop app, which aside from the icon that lives next to the Time Machine icon in the upper right menu bar in the Finder, I'm not really sure what the dropbox desktop app is? Yes it appears in the application folder, but if I double click on it, it simply takes me to the designated dropbox folder within my User folder. Which, by the way, except for emergencies, that is the only way I work with DropBox. The primary thing I want to do is faithfully mirror the activity of the Finder “DropBox” folder on the primary MacBook and have the files and folders populate to other devices.
Finally, all my posts from the last month or so started re. puzzling changes to modification dates following a migration from an old MacBook to a new one. In nearly 40 years of using a Macintosh this has been one of the most challenging technical snafus I've ever encountered.
Thanks,
Paul
syncing icons based on this article?
19 Replies
As to the green outlined icon with a tick inside, the explanation reads…
"A circle with a green border and a green checkmark means that a file was opened (directly or with a third-party application) and synced."
I find this confusing as well, since I'm only relating to dropbox as a Finder folder, opening any file necessarily involves a third-party application, where whether it be TextEdit, or MS Word, so that's kind of a given... and of course, if it's modified, it should sync and populate to other devices. So to my mind, this is normal standard behavior and doesn't require a new and different icon to signal something other than "A solid green circle with a white checkmark means your file is synced and available offline." Right?
Regarding your second link… I'm still a little fuzzy as to the full meaning of the "Dropbox desktop app" in my mind, it has two manifestations. It's an application in the application folder that is set to launch at start up and perform syncing on the designated folder and also is represented as an icon on the upper right finder menu near the Time Machine icon where I can set preferences and adjust its behavior, does it have any other meanings or manifestations?
"You manually change the folder’s modified date on the Dropbox desktop app"
Secondly, just curious how would one change the modify date using the dropbox desktop app?
- Rich
Super User II
As I read how the checkmark icons reflect the status of folders I can't really understand the difference between the two.
In regards to files:
- Solid green, white check: The file is available offline. It's stored locally on your drive and will remain that way until you change it.
- Solid grey, white cloud: The file is online-only. It exists in the cloud but not on your local drive. It will remain this way until you change or until the file is accessed.
- Green outline, green check: The file was previously online-only but has been accessed, which causes the file to be synced back to your local drive. It will remain this way until you change it or until Dropbox determines its no longer needed, at which point it will change back to online-only.
In regards to folders:
- Solid green, white check: The folder and all files within it are available offline. The folder and its content are stored locally on your drive.
- Solid grey, white cloud: At least one file within the folder is marked as online-only. Other files in the folder, if any are present, could be available offline or available.
- Green outline, green check: At least one file within the folder is marked as available (green outline, green check) but there are no online-only files in the folder.
