Windows 7 showing Win10-style slide-out notifications that overlay everything else, even RDP clients

[MartyMacGyver]

tl;dr - Notifications are huge now, and beware - they overlay everything, even RDP windows!

I'm running Windows 7 Pro x64 with Dropbox v18.4.32.

I'm getting Windows 10-style notifications from this app suddenly (they slide out from the side). Here's one now!

Before, you'd get a little bubble above the Dropbox icon: handy, told you things were happening, not big and redundantly redndant.

I use Dropbox on a few machines, all Windows 7. I first noticed this tonight during a remote desktop session and could not figure out a) why it was happening on a Windows 7 box when this is a Win10-type notification and b) why it would NOT stop happening no matter what I changed or disabled on the remote box! I checked every setting possible on the machine because once I ruled out the Dropbox settings (I even downgraded it) I thought surely this was some weird setting that some other app managed to enable. I uninstalled things (fortunately even more annoying things) to no effect.

Turns out, this notification box was popping up on the host machine and overlaying the RDP session window. Nothing else does that... definitely not Dropbox until now. No wonder some others who reported this have had a tough time taking a screenshot of it! It's easy once you figure out it's actually spamming the host machine in this unique and highly obtrusive way.

I realize there was some vital urge to make this design change (not having anything to do with actual user demand) but really, it stinks. If you want this behavior in Windows 10, use the Windows 10 framework to do it - don't make your own custom notification thing and have it overlay everything like this. It's just not necessary in Windows 7... and now, thanks to this, it's causing more harm than good by overlaying everything else and will be permanently disabled if it's going to be the way forward now.

Please fix this. At the very least, notifications shouldn't overlay everything else like this, even if they need to have this post-modern big and clunky sort-of-material-but-sorry-not-really design now. At most, go back to how it was for Windows 7 hosts.

[shinykitten07]

For some reason the dropbox notification style looks like a large grayish rectangle instead of the usual windows-styled notification box. It does not look good at all and it takes up way too much space on my screen. How can I turn this off?

[Jenni_Gerrard]

I do find the pop up notifications of changes to files in my shared folders quite useful, but suddenly today they have become much larger and darker windows, and are constantly getting in the way & distracting me.

How can I change the format back to some smaller & less instrusive?

[Rich]

You can't. There are no options to change the appearance of the notification windows.

Post a screenshot of what you're seeing please.

[Jenni_Gerrard]

I would but by the time I've got the snipping tool open & ready to use, the message has disappeared again!

If I can grab one I'll put it up ...

Why has the format suddenly changed today? I haven't changed any settings (dropbox or otherwise).

[Jenni_Gerrard]

And now I've grabbed a screenshot but it won't paste in here ... 😞

[Rich]

Put it in your Dropbox and create a share link to it. post the link.

[Jenni_Gerrard]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7uf2u29ou78pfq/Dropbox%20notification%20Capture.JPG?dl=0

[Fearg]

Hi,

I'm not really sure where you are seeing this notification icon, so could you provide more info so I can see if it is something that we can troubleshoot?

[Rich]

I've merged a few threads that all discuss the same issue.