Dropbox Finder integration breaks Quick Look and thumbnails - Mac OS Mojave 10.14

I have had the same problem for months since I've started using the "local / online" features of the Dropbox finder integration. It sometimes work but most of the time quicklook is not available for the recently synced files.

Screencapture here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/qcam8gjopv1yilj/Capture%20d%27%C3%A9cran%202019-01-09%2016.09.37.png?dl=0

Don't use the comman that starts with "touch", the first and 3rd commands work right away without system restart.

rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator

qlmanage -r

Thank you! That was sooooo annoying.

Found that even iif you delete the qlgenerator it will be again on place because Dropbox app install it again, so is neccesary to rename the plugin inside the app content

mv /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Resources/DropboxQL.qlgenerator /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Resources/_DropboxQL.qlgenerator

That way Dropbox can't copy it again to the Quicklook plugins folder.

NOTE: Any way do this at your risk.

Jay,

I'm having this issue all the time, it's very annoying.

I've contacted support, and I've disabled Finder Integration in addition to running these two commands.

qlmanage -r

qlmanage -r cache

Guys over at St. Clair Software have a great fix for this: 

https://www.stclairsoft.com/blog/2018/07/17/getting-rid-of-the-dropbox-quicklook-plugin/

It turns out that a new beta of DropBox installs its own QuickLook generator plugin that overrides the system-supplied plugin for generating a number of file and image formats – including those MS Office files. OK, fine – just delete it, right? That worked until he restarted his Mac, then DropBox launched at login and promptly (and silently) reinstalled its QuickLook plugin again. I guess it knows what’s best for us, eh?

After a little thought, we arrived at this solution:

1. Delete the DropBox QuickLook generator plugin
2. Create an empty file at that location to prevent DropBox from reinstalling it

Fortunately, QuickLook is smart enough to realize that an empty file isn’t going to help it generate previews, and just defaults back to the other plugins it has. Problem solved!

The easiest way to do this is to open Terminal and execute these three commands:

rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator
touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator
qlmanage -r

A nice simple solution once you get it figured out. I imagine this is one of those problems that’s going to crop up for a lot of people but isn’t quite obnoxious enough to get them to hunt down a solution. So there you go 

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Here's what I did:

1. Turn OFF "Finder Integration" in DB preferences & Restart to check to see if QL is working. (Mine wasn't so I continued to #2)
2. Open Terminal and typed in commands from above & restarted
3. My QL was now working! So then, as an experiment, I went back and tuned ON finder Integration in DB.
4. Now BOTH are operating correctly. Let's see how long this will last :) 

But also note that, unfortunately, QL will still NOT work if a file is not local on your hard drive. Still, I'll take what I can get. 

I am running Dropbox v67.4.83 and have Mojave 10.14.3 installed on both my 2018 Macbook pro and my iMac 5K.

I have tried both suggestions of all 3 

rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator
touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator
qlmanage -r

And the other suggested where you miss out the second starting with touch and neither have worked.

Doesn't seem to matter if I deactivate Finder Integration or not.

I am still left with Excel files and Word files not showing icon preview in and Finder view - not list, not column, not icon view, not gallery view.

Does anyone have an up to date fix that actually works now? I am really wishing I never upgraded as I think the Local/Online functionality has really screwed things up with the quicklook plugin.

Hey just curious, you are trying to use QuickLook on LOCAL files correct? If finder integration is ON then there will be a green checkmark on bottom right of icon (in icon view). 

If these are online only (cloud icon) QuickView will NOT work. 

LMK how it goes!

-A