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Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffStable Build 54.4.90
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What changed in how Dropbox does macOS notifications? Now I'm seeing an endless series of update notificaitons, even after the files are supposedly all in sync. It is showing new notifications for files that were updated DAYS ago.
ZavDropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi Michael. I'm an engineer at Dropbox trying to get you an answer--could you let us know which update notifications you're seeing exactly? A screenshot would be most helpful.
It was the Dropbox macOS notifications for a) a file has changed (or something to that effect) and b) x files have changed. I can't give more details because the notifications are gone, and I can't recreate. Dropbox has updated on both machines to the next stable build, 55.4.171.
Right now the Dropbox Notifications tab has everything checked, which is: @mentions, comments on files, tasks assigned to me, files and folders shard with me, opened files and folders, new files synced, edits to files. The notifications I was seeing were related to edits to files.
With the current stable build, I'm not seeing any macOS notifications. I tried creating a new file ("new files synced", I presume) and changing a file ("edits to files"). No notification was produced.
With build 54.4.90, it acted like it was only doing about one notification per second, so even though there were a bunch of changes, they continued long past when Dropbox finished synching. It either should have produced the notifications more quickly, or coalescesed them more aggresively into the "x files have changed" notification.
And, it appeared that there was something going on related to past updates. That is, the file actually synced the previous day, but I didn't get the notify until I woke the screen up.
So now I'm not sure where we are. Was there a problem in 54.4.90 that was fixed in the current build? Or does the current build have its own problem, since now there are no notifications?
We should probably move this conversation somewhere else, since build 55.4.171 has the same problem.
I said yesterday that there are no notifications. That's not exactly true. I was getting some "You changed file" and "You changed n files" notifications. But not others.
I just did an experiment:
- Save new file in root of dropbox on machine A. Result: it synched to machine B, but there was no notification.
- Changed data in the file. Result: in synced to machine B, but there was no notification.
- Renamed the file. Result: I started getting notifications, about 1 every 5 seconds, for file changes that happened DAYS ago. Maybe even for all updates since last Monday. I did the rename 6 minutes ago, it it is still sending notifications. It just now caught up to the test I ran yesterday where I said there are no notifications.
So the problem here is that for some reason, Dropbox isn't sending the notification, and instead it is saving it, until later something triggers a flood of all of the pending notifications. But realize that the file syncs are happening instantly, as usual. It is just the notification that is delayed.
Is what changed that Dropbox is now using macOS native notifications vs. some Dropbox private notification? I noticed that recently, perhaps coincident with this issue, the Dropbox notifications are Alerts, not Banners. Meaning, they stick until dismissed. (This is the kind of thing where having release notes would help in troubleshooting!)
OK, it finally finished with the notifications, after 10 minutes. 10 minutes * 12 per minute = 120 old notifications.
Clarence L.We've identified an issue with v54/v55 that may have been impacting your notifications -- this has been addressed as part of v56. Can you try installing the v56 beta?
[Dropbox's notifications has historically been configured as alerts and that has not changed in v54/v55]