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Forum Discussion
Solved
Electron framework in the desktop app leading to MacOS Tahoe slowdowns
Application Affected
Dropbox
Device
Mac
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
macOS 26
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
234.3.5480
Question or Issue
Recent discussions have identified an issue with the electron framework leading to significant slowdowns in Mac OS 26 (Tahoe).
You can see a good description of the problem here: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/09/30/electron-apps-causing-system-wide-lag-on-tahoe/
And this page offers scripts to identify apps that use the _cornerMask to draw drop shadows for windows in Electron apps (which triggers the slowdowns through WindowServer): https://gist.github.com/tkafka/e3eb63a5ec448e9be6701bfd1f1b1e58#file-detect-electron-apps-with-macos-lag-sh
I played around with he scripts and it looks like Dropbox 234.3.5480 is one of the affected Electron apps…
I'd be great to tweak the embedded framework (or use one of the newer, corrected frameworks) to eliminate the issue in Dropbox :-)
Hi everyone!
Thank you for your patience, ir's much appreciated.
I can confirm that a fix for this issue is now live in our most up to date stable build, 235.4.5905.
Can you all try updating and then test your performance and letting me know how you get on?
15 Replies
- Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi cortig, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
We appreciate the feedback on this matter in relation to the Dropbox desktop application slowing down a Mac OS device running Tahoe.
We take all comments and reports into consideration when improving the Dropbox app and services. Any update on this regarding MacOS tahoe slowdowns?
- Walter
Hey LegendofJuli - can you let us know if you notice those slowdowns on the latest, stable version of the Dropbox desktop app?
Any additional information is more than welcome!
Walter jumping in here...I still see these slowdowns on 26.0.1, and I am assuming it's dropbox because the other Electron framework apps I use have all been updated to the latest Electron framework.
There is a small chance it could be another app about which I'm unaware, but I believe 234.4.5591 is still not using Electron's most recent framework. Can you confirm one way or the other?- Neal
Community Manager
Hi everyone!
Thank you for letting us know about this. I can confirm our team is aware of this and will be rolling out a fix very soon. I'll monitor the situation and let you know as soon as there is an update.
It would be great to get a fix soon. I literally cannot use Dropbox on my M4 laptop because I experience huge slowdowns on open / save dialogs whenever it's running. It's night and day. If Dropbox is running = huge lag. No Dropbox = fast.
- Neal
Hi everyone!
Thank you for your patience, ir's much appreciated.
I can confirm that a fix for this issue is now live in our most up to date stable build, 235.4.5905.
Can you all try updating and then test your performance and letting me know how you get on?
Hi Neal,
Thanks for responding. I don't believe that 235.4.5905 fixes the issue.
Looking forward to the fix.
I can confirm, that the new version is NOT fixing the issue with Electron Apps.
Looking forward to the fix.
- Neal
Hi postnumbers,
Thanks for responding! I just wanted to clear something up. It looks like you're checking this using Furbo.
That tool looks up what version of Electron we're using and infers from the version that our app will cause the Tahoe performance issue, but we patched our Electron fork to address the issue, so even though we're on an older version we won't actually cause the performance regression.
Unfortunately some detection tools only look at the Electron version. The "Shamelectron" website actually looks at the contents of the app, for the specific piece of code that causes the issue, which is why it marks Dropbox as OK
If you check on https://avarayr.github.io/shamelectron/ you'll see that we have in fact fixed this issue.However if you find that stopping & running Dropbox does impact your performance that is a different story and please let me know if this is the case.
