Seeking Insights: Dropbox Re-authentication Issues Across Various macOS Versions

[tuiren]

Hello Dropbox Community,

I'm reaching out for insights or shared experiences regarding an issue with Dropbox on macOS. Our team has encountered a peculiar problem that seems to span across different versions of macOS, and I'm curious to know if others in the community have faced something similar.

Issue Summary: We've observed that after upgrading to macOS Sonoma, several team members were unexpectedly logged out of Dropbox, necessitating a re-login and complete file re-sync. Later we discovered that this issue isn't confined to just the macOS Sonoma upgrade; it has also occurred on older macOS versions and across different user accounts, even for machines that haven't been upgraded to a new OS at all. Each time, the Dropbox application prompts the 'Welcome to Dropbox' screen upon system restart or login, leading to a re-authentication process. This results in the existing Dropbox folder being renamed to '[account name] (old)', and a new sync folder being created in the same location. This is a huge challenge because for some team-members there were sync inconsistencies across the two folders when the old one had not fully been synced before the re-authentication took place. On top of that we are working with a lot of large files and re-syncing multiple terabytes just for the sake of comparing the old vs. the new folder is not always possible on the same machine because of limited disk storage.

Potential causes and clarifications: I am certain that no one in our team is using the Dropbox beta application implementing the File Provider change on Apple's side. I can also rule-out anyone triggering a forced re-authentication via the admin panel, because the problem did not occur for all users at the same time. It started about 2 weeks ago and is still impacting new users daily, up to this day not everyone had to re-authenticate and some users are anxious when it may "hit" them. We were not able to determine a pattern or actions taken on the user's machine leading to the re-authentication.

Request for Community Feedback: Thus I am reaching out to see if anyone else in the Dropbox community has experienced similar re-authentication issues, particularly in the context of macOS updates (both Sonoma and older versions). Any insights, experiences, or even theories about what might be causing these re-authentication challenges would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and any input you can provide!

[Jay]

Hi @tuiren, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Have you been in contact with our support team regarding this issue that you're experiencing?

This will help me to assist further!

[tuiren]

Hi @Jay,

thanks for your quick response. I've been in contact with your support team (Ticket #23003190) and we talked about different possible issues, however they determined it to be really hard or impossible to find the root cause. Which led me asking here in the forum, hoping others have experienced something similar and may have found out what the cause was in their instance.

Best

Tobias

[Jay]

Thanks for the info. I'll leave this thread open for other users to comment with their observations on this matter.