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Dropbox re-install logs back in to old account without prompt
My Dropbox 224.4.4811 isn't syncing to my macOS 15.4.1. The "Dropbox" folder is empty. It's empty here /Users/brandon/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox. Yet the menu's say it's "up to date!"
Ye olde solution is to purge Dropbox. Which I've done about 5 times, asking ChatGPT for some deeper bash scripts to purge it all!
I toss the App. Then run commands from this TIL. https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall#reinstallDropboxmac (and some more via those bash scripts... I want to nuke it!)
Reboot my Mac.
Reinstall Dropbox, just double click the "Dropbox" icon from the DMG. It downloads and automagically logs me back into my account! It never gives me the option to choose the account I want to login? I'm pulling my hair out! lol.
What am I missing?
something went ape on my account. can you look at logs?
The Events page is your log. It will show you all the recent activity on your account, if any.
... on 5/9/25 is when it mirrors Dropbox and put everything into its #RECYCLE directory.
Look on your Events page and see what happened on 5/9.
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Thanks all. Somehow Dropbox wiped out when I uninstalled. Never had that happen before.
- Rich
Super User II
something went ape on my account. can you look at logs?
The Events page is your log. It will show you all the recent activity on your account, if any.
... on 5/9/25 is when it mirrors Dropbox and put everything into its #RECYCLE directory.
Look on your Events page and see what happened on 5/9.
also... I use my Synology to backup my Dropbox and on 5/9/25 is when it mirrors Dropbox and put everything into its #RECYCLE directory.
yes. I'm certain. That's what sucks. Files vanished. I see the shared folders... something went ape on my account. can you look at logs?
- Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Are you certain that you've logged into the correct Dropbox account that had the files?
Do you see any history on that account on the events page?
wow. I just logged in and see that all my files have been deleted. I didn't delete them. Not sure how this could have happened. Is there a way to restore them? It says in the Deleted Files that there are none to restore? what the what?
It says there are "0 bytes of 22.25 GB"
yep. In clouded in my bash script.
#!/bin/bash # Script to fix Dropbox permissions and reset Dropbox configuration # Change ownership of user's home directory to current user sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME" # Recursively change ownership of Dropbox folder to current user sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox # Recursively add read and write permissions for the user on Dropbox folder sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox # Move the Dropbox configuration folder to Trash (backup) sudo mv ~/.dropbox ~/.Trash/dropbox.old # Remove any ACLs (Access Control Lists) from home directory sudo chmod -N ~ # Move Dropbox helper tools to a backup location sudo mv /Library/DropboxHelperTools ~/DropboxHelperTools.old echo "Dropbox permissions reset complete. You may need to restart Dropbox application."makes no difference.
yes, tried this. allows me to relogin and register the machine, but still no local files. only online files from the drop down menu.
- Rich
But... when running through setup I picked which files to sync and it lists ZERO. Maybe something is wrong with my Dropbox account?
Have you signed in to the Dropbox website with the same credentials and verified that you can see your files there?
Hello Brandon W.1
Try removing the ~/.dropbox/ folder. It is a hidden folder (notice the dot at the start) in your user folder. So the full path would be:
/Users/brandon/.dropbox
Hope this helps,
Andrew (DBoxTips)P.S. I am a volunteer on the Dropbox forums, freely and happily sharing know-how with other users, not affiliated with Dropbox in any way.
