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Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
3 years ago
Solved

Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users

In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability.   https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    2 years ago
    Hi Everybody,
     
    We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article. 
     
    Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
    • This beta is only available to US-based users
    • You must be on macOS 15 beta
    • You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
     
    Please let me know if you have any further questions!
jahshwa's avatar
jahshwa
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago

It seems like you are saying that Dropbox should still work with my external drive because it hasn't been migrated to the MacOS experience (as terrible as that is) — but for me, all my Dropbox functionality is destroyed. I have to physically sync each file manually if I want to see my files stored in Dropbox. In other words, I'm now paying for absolute garbage. 

I do hope that a solution is found. I'm curious if anyone has found another product that can sync to externals. Anyone? I heard it's largely an issue arising from Apple, which isn't surprising... I'm also using OneDrive and GoogleDrive. 

Thanks everyone! We do hope to have a functioning Dropbox or Dropbox alternative soon! This has really destroyed our work flow as well. 

Bluebicycle's avatar
Bluebicycle
Collaborator | Level 8
3 years ago

External syncing does still work on the latest MacOS as long as you don’t migrate to File Provider.

Apple are a huge company and security is paramount to them. It’s reasonable that they have concerns about how secure files can be on external drives, so they changed the API, so that it’s managed within the Mac itself.

File Provider makes syncing unworkable for many of us as the internal drives cannot accommodate the storage headroom to work.

Dropbox are also a huge company 600 million users, it’s now on them to find a solution and I’m sure they will.

Meanwhile Just don’t migrate to File Provider it’s that simple.

  • crimsonnoise's avatar
    crimsonnoise
    Helpful | Level 5
    3 years ago

    "External syncing does still work on the latest MacOS as long as you don’t migrate to File Provider."

     

    How does this work in practice? Will this work on later MacOS versions such as Ventura? 

     

    What is / where is File Provider?

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