Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
What happens if I don't update to the new Dropbox for MacOS?
I have Dropbox on my M1 MacMini, M1 Macbook Air, old 2015 MacBook Air (all three on Monterey 12.6.3) as well as my iPad Pro and iPhone 13. On the computers, my DropBox folder is in users/{myname}/Dro...
By default, new files added to the account from the site or another device would sync as online-only on your machine, but you can still mark them as available offline.
Files will still sync as normal, and yes, you'd need to change your aliases if any apps of programs need to locate the Dropbox folder.
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHey Macki, thanks for taking the time to reply to this thread.
As part of the Dropbox for macOS update, the Dropbox folder must indeed be located in ~/Library/CloudStorage on your Mac.
We definitely understand any inconvenience caused by this.
As with any operating system, macOS is updated regularly and with that, we must keep the Dropbox app aligned with any requirements set out by an OS.
I will of course, pass your comments along to our team about this, so thanks for your feedback here.
Hannah,
As your response to my concerns was basically to suggest that the issue is with the Mac OS and was out of Dropbox's hands, I took the time to look at alternatives, and found that none of your competitors seem to be having the same problem and that there are quite a few alternative options. I spent the time since my last message testing out three of them, and found one in particular that I like a lot. It's less expensive, gives me a much more granular level of control over what files and folders are stored where, and lets me put them wherever I want - and not in some specific location that they decide on. They also offer a deal with a one-off lifetime payment for a positively huge amount of storage (10TB) which I will probably take. So I guess I should thank you for giving me the reason to look at better solutions.
I hope someone at Dropbox figures out how to work with Mac OS so that they can do something similar, otherwise I suspect that they will lose quite a few customers who have Apple computers and like to have control over their own systems.
- Hi,
We have a business account, and the Mac I use has a 10tb external drive connected to Dropbox. That data obviously can’t be moved to ~/Library/CloudStorage: there simply isn’t enough room.
Are your saying that after the update (when will that happen?) any change I make on the external drive will no longer be synced?
That’s a non starter for us. It’s the whole reason we pay for a Dropbox Business account, to keep our stuff in sync. I have to have my data both local and in the cloud and in sync.
And I don’t want stuff only in the cloud. If I did I’d be using a much cheaper cloud provider. The benefit of DropBox is the sync of ALL our data, where I need it.
I suggest you escalate this, and force Apple to change course. This change is completely ridiculous.I think the problem is not with Apple. No cloud storage company other than Dropbox that I could find is having this problem or imposing a change on their users as a result of anything Apple has done.
Hi, would you be so kind to point us to the other solutions? (the one you picked specially)
Sure, although I have a feeling the post may get deleted by Dropbox
The one I went with is pCloud. They get good reviews and their system seems to work as advertised. They also offer an option for end-to-end encryption among other add-ons.
The other one I liked was Tresorit and I also looked at IDrive. I wanted to get something in place quickly before Dropbox unilaterally upgraded their app and tried to reorganize my hard drive, which would have resulted in a catastrophic mess as there was not enough space on any of my machines. I can't imagine trying to unravel that.
Based on a comparison over a day or so, which is less time than I would normally take for a decision like this, I concluded that pCloud was the best fit for me. So far, it's working out well and I like it a lot.
Dropbox has been around a long time and I expect they're working with legacy systems that that may not be easily modified whereas a lot of the alternatives are much younger companies and have had the opportunity to start from scratch and use up to date technologies and approaches.
Macki wrote:Dropbox has been around a long time and I expect they're working with legacy systems that that may not be easily modified whereas a lot of the alternatives are much younger companies and have had the opportunity to start from scratch and use up to date technologies and approaches.
That's what's so weird about this, though—Apple's whole File Provider API thing hasn't been around long at all, maybe 3-4 years at most IIRC. So any changes Dropbox is making to work with it are brand new, not related to legacy systems.
It seems like what Dropbox could easily do is leave the existing app in place for those of us it works for, and then roll this new, limited File Provider API version only to people who keep some of their files online-only, since those are the only people who seem to have problems with the existing app. But instead they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater and forcing everyone over to this limited version to make their own lives easier.
Macki - I'd love to know the service you found. Can you share?
Can you let us know who the other provider is that you found?
I am not planning to upgrade based on the chat RE this , but i would like to have a plan B in place.
tom
Please, Macki, could you share with me the name of the alternative to Dropbox that you found? Thank you.
