Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users

phantom tides it's so disappointing the lack of communication from @Dropbox. Sadly they've communicated so infrequently and so poorly that it's just gotten everyone's back up. I personally think the reason that maybe they're having such a hard time is all the extra bells and whistles they keep adding on to their software. Maybe the integration with the new API is just is too much for them to code all in at this present moment in time.

Again, maybe had they communicated with the customers about the challenges they were facing and what their roadmap was, i.e. maybe some finder integrations dropped off on the initial release, followed by updates over a period of x number of months, then I'm pretty sure most customers would've accepted that. But that wasn't the case and this is where we all are, moving away from a service many of us have used, and loved, for well over a decade, some even 2 decades.

It's a sad sad day but I am sorry to say that they don't have anyone else to blame except for themselves here. Whoever runs their PR division needs firing probably!

"I personally think the reason that maybe they're having such a hard time is all the extra bells and whistles they keep adding on to their software."

UKD I appreciate the support, and you are certainly entitled to any belief you'd like — but I don't know what evidence you have for your statement that it's the bells and whistles that have messed up Dropbox, especially when the Apple APIs are a fact. I'm generally more influenced by evidence than by speculation. and I try to be careful to keep the difference in mind.

What I do know is that other companies have addressed the challenge effectively, that Dropbox has not, and that the communication is insufficient for me. If it works for others, great — that's an opinion and a judgment call. Between the reality that it doesn't work, and the infrequent and uninformative communication, I am, sadly, going elsewhere. I respect if your judgment call is different from mine.

Cheers.

Adding my +1 to this being a frustration. I've built an entire workflow for my company around dropbox over the past 10 years or so and it's going to cause some major frustration for me if/when this stops working. It will absolutely cause me to migrate to another service the moment my external drive no longer syncs. For now, even though the dropbox app seems to be less reliable than in the past, and icons sometimes do not show up or update, it at least is continuing to sync to my external. Hopefully this will continue until they sort out a solution, even if it limits other functionality.

I think DropBox wanted to sell to apple years ago but Steve Jobs was adamant that it wasn't anything worth buying and that 'mobile me' was going to be just as good (haha). even iCloud files is a poorly implemented option of something meant to do a similar job. But I think they want to sell more iCloud storage to everyone. They are pushing for subscriptions and service bundles like with Apple One and Arcade etc. For probably high proportion of Apple customers they won't understand the difference between more iCloud space and a service like drop box, and storage beyond 1 or 2Tb very rare. Then for the big boys that they have closer ties with, they are likely using their own proprietary synching or exchange type stuff that means these changes don't bother them. it's the usual 'Pros' that get the shaft.

this needs testing ASAP and making it more prominent, if this works DropBox need to be contacting customers to tell them there is this work around as it is a pretty good fix for an otherwise unmitigated disaster for a lot of people.

have you seen this post from another user further down this thread...>>

"

However a Reddit user came up with a possible workaround:

"It is linked to your home user folder location. If you move your home folder to an external drive, dropbox goes with it. And for that matter, so do google drive, one drive, box etc."

thoughts?

I'm frustrated and disappointed by this, and wanted to add my voice too. Gosh, many relatable stories.

So far my Dropbox hasn't tried to update and force me to move files onto internal storage. 🤞 I see this message:

However, another Mac I'm on that only uses internal storage was forced to update, or Dropbox would quit.

Like others, I've long relied on a professional path that depends on trusting Dropbox for file-sync integrity, but this sounds confusing and messy — the right thing to do here is to have a solution/workaround IN PLACE before removing the old pathway. That's called making a smooth migration, and not having it is simply not responsible.

Dropbox risks destroying much goodwill with longtime customers. The lack of communication is even more detrimental, during a time where we and our workflows would benefit from reassurance and updates.

I have a setup with two user accounts on the same Mac, each connected to the same Dropbox account. One user has its Dropbox folder on the internal drive. The other, which I only sync periodically, has its Dropbox folder on an enormous external drive. Therefore, it looks like Dropbox is going to force everything to try to get crammed onto the internal drive, which won't work. The desktop Dropbox app, when I'm logged into my primary user account with the DB folder living internally, keeps prompting me to upgrade it since it doesn't recognize that a ton of files on this same DB account live on external drive.

Even though I just paid my annual DB bill in February, I'm seriously looking at sync.com. The answer DB support seems to be giving us for this major flaw is that it might come up with a solution at some undetermined time in the future. That's not good enough, especially since mine seems to be an edge case for which their "we won't for an upgrade if your DB folder lives on an external drive" promise won't hold true.

I was unaware of this issue, until i last night was hit with the same prompt y'all is dealing with.

my entire teams work structure is now utterly crippled and i'm literally here in the studio in the weekend pulling out my hair trying to navigate the damage this has created so far.

so many broken links, so much data just mixed up now between client computers and our edit computers. it's such a mess.

is there really no update from Dropbox side? this is a costly move for many of their more pro clients.

jeeesus christ.

vsloth I believe you can bypass the update, but don’t know if you can do this retroactively. Personally I have switched to sync.com, at least until Dropbox figures out how to let us continue using our external disks. It’s not quite as comfy as Dropbox but works very well and does everything I need very quickly. Plus, Sync gives you 6 Terabytes for $240 a year.

Plus, ]if you have a DropBox Team account, you’ll save major bucks in the long term by switching to Sync. Unlimited space costs just $15 a user per month on Sync, compared to $24 a user per month on Dropbox.