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Hi. I've just upgraded my Mac to MacOS Monterey and received the warning below. Apple recommends that I contact Dropbox about this, and though I am a paying customer, the only support mechanism that I can see is a relatively naïve Chatbot that could not parse my questions. Hopefully the community (and Dropbox staff who monitor it) will be able to reply.
Does Dropbox offer or plan to offer an updated extension for MacOS? Apple indicates the current one I have will become obsolete...
Thanks!
I am having this EXACT issue, and have already been on with Dropbox Support for two hours! The first hour, they kept saying it was the other apps (that I couldn't open the DB files on) that had the issue. Then they said 'oh wait, yes you are right'. The second hour was 'It's Apple's fault' with absolutely no way to help me. They're still happy to charge me $150 per month though!
This and the weird limitation of the backup feature(you can't select any folders you want) made me cancel my professional account and I'm now looking for alternatives.
From what I can till Apple announced these changes long time ago which means Dropbox had a lot of time to react, but they did almost nothing. Now they have had some kind of beta software that I don't get even if I have selected early releases for months.
You really need to step up your game Dropbox.
Apple reports that it informed third party developers of the need to update their software to accommodate Monterey 12.3
IN 2019!
What is taking Dropbox so long to roll out a production solution?
Is this what we're paying for?
d_inmetrowest
I understand that software is hard. I'm a developer myself. However, these changes that Apple is making in macOS are not coming out of the blue. Monterey has existed and been available to developers since June of last year (2021). There are several developer talks about new APIs around file system extensions and other tech that Dropbox needs to adopt to continue being supported. Similarly, the new Apple Silicon platform has been out for even longer, and we just now hear how Dropbox is working hard to bring an app that runs native on M1. To be fair, many companies have struggled to release M1 compatible apps. If available, I'd love more insight into what the engineering challenge is to bring Dropbox up to compatibility with the new file system APIs from Apple.
I really want Dropbox to win. There are so many things I love about it. But the amount of time it takes to even keep up with macOS from a year ago doesn't inspire confidence that Dropbox prioritizes the core experience that users like me are paying for: an awesome, lightweight, always works Desktop integration for file storage. I'm rooting for you, Dropbox! Now go and do the thing.
When Dropbox arrived on the scene, the way they synchronized files across computers was like magic! But these days, that's old hat, and there are lots of competitors. With so many people moving to mobile, and to web based applications, there is less need for synchronization, or even "files" (!). Dropbox, the file synchronizing product, is no longer new, innovative, and exciting (it remains extremely useful, just not "new"), and Dropbox, the company, is struggling to find a way to stay relevant.
So they don't seem to care about the "old" product, even though that is really their bread and butter. They're grasping for some reason, any reason for people to still care about them. So we get ridiculous things like "Paper", while the core product slowly rots. And we are left to wonder if we should stick with Dropbox, or look for alternatives.
Hi I am still running Big Sur and thought this issue would be resolved by now. With Monterey, are you able to see Dropbox files on the most recent version of ios? Any update on this issue would be appreciated.
Diane, there is an inconvenient workaround, as noted below, and Dropbox has not provided any updates beyond what is noted above.
The issue for me is that, under Monterey 12.3 I have lost the ability to open files that are held remotely on Dropbox through third party apps such as MS Word. I can't click on them and open them within the app. They are listed as zero byte-length files (which of course they are, since they don't reside on the Mac), so the virtualization function of Dropbox in presenting cloud-stored files as locally-stored and accessible has been lost. To open them, you have to go to Finder and trigger the file to load locally. It is an inconvenient workaround if you are in and out of MS Office files frequently.
I would shift all my storage to iCloud if I didn't have the PC desktop, since three of my four devices are Apple. I use Dropbox precisely because it has historically been operating system-agnostic. Unless this issue is fixed, I will drop Dropbox when I decommission the PC.
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