Dropbox is not starting and syncing on my new MacBook Air

[gordon62]

I recently bought a new MacBook Air - M1 2020 running Mac OS 11.1 - (20C69) - and migrated everything from my old MacBook.  

I noticed that dropbox had stopped syncing new local files created on the new MacBook Air to dropbox.  I have deleted the app and reinstalled with the latest version of dropbox (115.4.601).  On launching the programme the syncing/starting never completes.  After days the dropbox icon on the top bar is still grey and on clicking it still says "starting" with the rotating blue sync icon.

Clicking setting the setting icon in dropbox on the top bar I see "sign in" - but on clicking this the menu simply disappears.

Does anyone have any ideas what I can do?  Is this a linking to the dropbox file issue? If so how do I resolve that?  Is it a hardware issue with the new Macs?  If so... any suggestions?  Many thanks.

[Mark · Accepted solution]

Can you try an advanced reinstall please @gordon62 ?

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/advanced-reinstall

[gordon62]

That fixed it.  Thanks so much!

[tonywardarts]

This resolved my missing Smart Sync icons on my M1 MBP too. Thanks!

[prjctfish]

@dropbox when are you going to solve these installation issues. I just spent 3 hours yesterday helping a friend who upgraded to Mac Big Sur and DB completely stopped working. DB tech support blamed it on anti-virus software but turned out that the regular update installed doesn't get rid of all the "older" components.

DB Tech support never mentioned advanced re-install I had to do their work. Time to stop blaming customers and fix YOUR issues. 

[salpal]

I am not able to figure out how to do this and Apple told me that dropbox hasn't written the software yet? Wondering if I need to discontinue my subscription until this is done?

[Lusil]

Hey @salpal, thanks for joining us on this thread. 

If you have the desktop app installed, could you try manually launching it from your applications menu?

In case you get any error messages, send us a screenshot so that we have a better visual of it.