High CPU usage even when not syncing or indexing

[fort]

For the past couple of days, Dropbox has been consistently using around 30% of my CPU, when not syncing or indexing anything (i.e., the menu bar drop down says `Up to date`). Any idea why this might be happening, and what I can do to get Dropbox to idle properly?

I'm on a MacBook Air, running macOS 10.13.6 and Dropbox 58.4.92.

Thanks.

[megawhite]

Hi, I looked at all my DB settings, uninstalled, re-installed.  It's still consuming a lot of RAM ~500MB just to keep 20k files in sync:

[megawhite]

After existing, opening and leaving 2 hours:

What on earth is it doing with that much memory?!  Outlook which has been open for days is 'only' using 160MB and that's far more sophisticated than Dropbox.

[aljorton]

I have the same question.  I've tried the recommended steps above and Dropbox still uses 550+ MB of system memory when it's not syncing, I'm not using any of the files I have stored, etc.  I love Dropbox and have used it for years.  But the system memory issue hasn't been touched since it began awhile ago.  And this isn't the first thread about it.  Will there ever be a fix?  Or is this something that can only be solved by switching to an alternative?

[megawhite]

@aljortonwhat OS are you running?

[aljorton]

Windows 11, but it also happened with my last laptop with Windows 10

[megawhite]

Clearly unlikely to do with the OS then.

How many files do you have in your Dropbox folder?  For me, 20,759 files, 2665 folders totalling 21.6GB.  Considering the same app deals with quotas up to 5,000GB, my current usage profile should be no sweat.

[aljorton]

I have 62,586 files.  It's mostly personal (lower quality) photos and scanned 1-2 page documents (both .jpg and .pdf) for my work.  So they aren't huge files and it's built up gradually since 2015.  Total space is around 170 GB.  I could go through and delete some older stuff.  But I'm far from my 2TB limit, so I didn't think it was necessary. 

[megawhite]

If you leave Task Manager open do you see Dropbox going crazy consuming one of your CPU cores for 10 minutes plus once or twice per day?  I have 4 cores and 8 logical processors, Dropbox is consuming 20% of that right now.  There's no associated disk activity which there would be if it was hashing files or whatever.

I wonder if they're mining crypto on my computer...  The graphs are showing 4 minutes of history on the low update speed setting in Task Manager.  All that CPU is Dropbox as I was away from the computer.  That would explain RAM usage as well!

[megawhite]

@dropbox so what's the deal with why your software consumes so much RAM and CPU?

Also, have you considered how much extra CO2 emissions the processing issue is causing by millions of computers worldwide using 40W extra due to your software pinning the CPU for significant time on a daily basis, for no valid reason?  This needs fixing.  (Also something for Microsoft to think about with their heavyweight Windows Updates and ComPatTelRunner.exe nonsense that goes on every day.)

[aljorton]

I will give this a try to see.  I'll be traveling for a month or so, but will check when I'm back at my desk regularly and can keep an eye on it.  This is an interesting thought.