Dropbox macOS Beta (fileproviderd based Dropbox) is an absolute nightmare!

I made the mistake of opting in to the Dropbox beta which is based on macOS fileproviderd integration, which the update notice insisted was perfectly safe. It is anything but. For the record, I am on an M1 Max laptop, running Monterey.

 

This is a disaster. Things seemed to be fine. I had every folder set for offline access, which worked fine for a while. Then today, after a reboot, I lost offline access to the entire Dropbox folder. The files were just gone, and had to be downloaded from scratch.

 

Despite having everything marked as "make files available offline", Dropbox decided there were no local files at all. Even my sidebar shortcuts to folders in my Dropbox disappeared.

 

I lost days of work. For whatever reason, any files updated in the last few days were not synced. After the reboot, the new offline versions of those updated files that had not synced (Logic Pro X projects in this case) disappeared, and the only available files were the older online versions. New files were simply missing. Poof, gone! I verified this by checking my Dropbox on the web. Only the old versions of those files were there. None of the new files.

 

I've had it. I've used Dropbox for years. But now I cannot trust it to do the most basic thing: DON'T DELETE MY DATA!!!! I have always been skeptical about the just-in-time offline file sync. I never trusted it. That's why I marked everything for offline use. But Dropbox, in their infinite wisdom, has removed a universal setting for this. I just had to trust that by marking every folder as offline, my data would remain local. My skepticism was well placed.

 

I THINK I have a valid Time Machine backup on my Synology. Let's hope this new Cloud location is not excluded from that backup. Otherwise I'm completely screwed.

 

Regardless, you have lost a customer. I'm not coming back.