v142.3.4187 Native M1 Silicon?

thank you for that, jlaguna, and I will try to do that, but when I tried to follow your link to the guide, all I got was:

tillkrueger Here's the guide that JWL Photo put together. The only thing I would suggest changing at this point is step 7; the current releases are compiled for Apple Silicon so there is no need to install a (quite possibly buggy) beta. Just download the current stable release from HERE. 

*****

Hi!

So you want to install the MacOS 12.3 beta?

There are several things you should know first:

• Do not expect any support from the Dropbox team.
• Do not expect to find any official documentation on how to install the beta or what the builds are supposed to do/fix.
• You are on your own (other than help from the community)!

Still want to do it? Okay, here is what I have cobbled together from my own experiences and from others contributing to various threads here on the community, like from @jlaguna and @Andy P.4 :

1. Make sure everything is currently synced using your current stable build of the app.
2. Backup anything on Dropbox that you can't afford to lose.
3. Make sure you have "Early Releases" turned on in your online settings.
4. Disconnect your current app/computer from your account by either:
   
   1. Signing out of the app on your computer OR
   2. Going to your account online and disconnecting your computer (device) from the account in the Security section of your settings (probably the better way to do it).
5. Uninstall the Dropbox app from your computer (using an uninstaller like CleanMyMac is best).
6. OPTIONAL: Trash the old Dropbox folder from Users/<YourUserID> (the new files will be in /Users/<YourUserID>/Library/CloudStorage, so the old files are just taking up space)
7. Download the most recent beta "Universal Installer" from Desktop Client Builds (Note: the version number may not correspond to what you actually get installed. E.g., my current beta version is 145.2.2188, while the latest downloadable beta version is 144.3.4464. Using the universal installer [with "Early Releases" turned on] will get you whatever is the latest MacOS 12.3 version.)
8. Install the app and it should walk you through setting it up as a "clean" install and require you to sign back in. This will trigger a new synchronization of your (chosen) folders. You will have to download any that you want offline again, since they are being moved to CloudStorage (which is why I said you could remove your old folder that showed up under "Favorites.")
9. Things should work at that point!

Good luck and happy syncing!

jlaguna Thank you so much for your kind help and instructions.
While I am willing to try this, I am also considering making this a last-ditch effort to find a reason to stay with Dropbox as my cloud storage provider of choice. If I think about how many days and hours I wasted with exercises like this, I wonder what still ties me to Dropbox, other than habit. But that's another discussion 😉

For now, I shall give it my best shot, with your help and the help of the community, since Dropbox itself seems to have little interest to help its customers more directly.

To follow the instructions to a T, I am just now backing up what was synced over the past 2 days. Am I correct in assuming that during this process, I will have to choose again all the folders that I want to keep locally? Because that would be a calamity since it took me literally years to prune my local file copies based on which ones I most often access during work on my dozens of projects. Is there some way you know of to keep the settings of what is on- and offline from my previous installation?

If I can't do that, I wonder whether I should even do this exercise, or use this opportunity to upload all of my files to one of my other cloud storage services and call it a day.

...maybe the better question would be: which file contains the settings for what is saved locally and which files are online-only?

When I submit the Dropbox app to be uninstalled completely by AppCleaner, I get this...any idea which of these I should not uninstall or back up to keep at least that sync setting?

Dropbox dependencies

...to make some progress, I decided to start from scratch and deleted everything related to Dropbox, including the 335GB of synced data.

Upon installing the latest stable build (148.4.4519), I decided to set the Dropbox folder location to /Users/till/Library/Cloud Storage/Dropbox, since that was the location that the newest beta expected...since this appears to be the location that Dropbox will expect when I do upgrade to the latest version, I am hoping that such a version will *not* have to sync all files again, as it did yesterday.

It is now syncing the offline-only folders, saying that it will take about an hour...seems like a long time for nothing but an empty directory structure, don't you think?

What makes me a bit concerned is that the Dropbox folder and all of its content do *not* show any Dropbox icons, no right-click menu options for Dropbox either...will those not appear until after all folders are synced, or is something already not working correctly?

Let's see where this process takes me.

After about an hour of counting down from my ~420k files, it went all the way down to "45 files, 1 sec", but then jumped back up to "487 files, 13 sec", then "5 files, 1 sec", then "1327 files, 40 sec", and so on, and so on, for the past half hour...it just keeps cycling through what appears to be random numbers of remaining files, and won't finish syncing.

Another 3,5 hrs wasted, so far. Pffffff.... 😕

What is it with Dropbox that makes it so unreliable?

well, since Dropbox was obviously in a mad cycle of not wanting to finish the last 5 files (or is it 45 or 1327, or 328, or... ?!), I restarted my computer, logged out of Dropbox and back in, and now it behaves as if I have just installed it, starting from scratch at ~420k files to sync...this is ridiculous.

Half a Sunday wasted 😞

...it's been hung up on just "Syncing...", with no other information. Back to square one.

I don't think I can handle any more of this...but my workflow is invested in Dropbox, sharing folders with tons of clients and collaborators.

And now, 3hrs later, when I just looked at it again...it says "Your files are up to date."...Heureka!

jlaguna Thanks again for your instructions...bumpy ride it was, but with redemption at the end 😄

However, I still don't have any Dropbox icons or controls in the right-click menu, so what could be causing that?

tillkrueger Wow, what a journey, I hope you are truly at then end of it! FWIW, since my own reinstallation a couple of months ago, Dropbox seems to be exhibiting the speed and reliability that we'd gotten used to and that justified the comparatively steep monthly cost. As for the iconography, a couple of Dropbox techs that I communicated with claimed that it is Apple's doing, that the mandated switch to Apple's File Provider framework (part of which was the required move to ~/Library/CloudStorage) meant loss of control over the iconography. But, as I noted in another post, that's bullsh*t — Google Drive has recently switched to the File Provider framework and they managed to preserve their iconography. (I should note, too, that Google's update to the new framework was utterly seamless, but for having to give some new permissions to the Drive app when requested. It is mystifying why Dropbox's update has been such a dog's breakfast.)

As for the loss of the context-sensitive menu options, have you tried relaunching the Finder (accessible via the Force Quit option under the Apple menu icon to the far left of the menu bar)?