How do you disable Smart Sync on the account?

[sergimia]

I have my local installation on Monterrey stuck in Smart Sync, even though I disable Smart Sync prior to full uninstall on my M1 Air.

Some folders are still being displayed with Cloud icon

[Megan]

Hey @sergimia, how are you today? 

Can you try selecting these online-only files, then right-clicking on them, then selecting Smart Sync and changing them to Local? 

That should do the trick. I hope that this helps.

[sergimia]

Where I can find this menu option?

[Jay]

Hi @sergimia, could you confirm the version of the Dropbox desktop application you're running? 

You can do this by hovering your mouse over the Dropbox icon in the system tray or menu bar.

[sergimia]

Hello @Jay 

Looks like I'm running 141.1.3101

[Jay]

Thanks, it looks like you're running the Apple silicon edition of the Dropbox desktop application. 

Are you viewing these files inside the Dropbox folder itself?

[Cherucruz]

How can I completely disable smart sync on MacOS Ventura? I've read other threads on this topic, but none of their answers seem to apply to MacOS Ventura.

• One article suggested disabling the feature in Preferences. However when I open my Dropbox app from the menu bar and go into Preferences, to the Sync tab, the described option to control smart sync is missing.
• The support article here does not apply to Ventura: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/filesystem-integration#optout
• If I right-click my dropbox folder in Finder and click "Make available offline", at first it seems to make my dropbox folder available offline as desired. However, as soon as I add files to my dropbox from my other computer, the new files still default to "online only" and are not properly synced to my Macbook.

This is a huge issue, as I rely on having a canonical copy of my dropbox available offline on my Macbook, automatically synced as long as my Dropbox menu bar app is online and running. I need a reliable way to ensure that all current and future dropbox files will always be available offline on my Mac. In other words, I need a way to disable smart sync entirely.

Dropbox has worked great since I started using it in mid-2010, up until a few months ago. But the new update seems to have broken my use case for Dropbox - ensuring that the Dropbox copy available offline on my Mac's hard drive is identical to the Dropbox copy in the cloud.

My app is at version v162.4.5419.

Update - I fixed the issue by switching away from Dropbox to a competing service. It's worse than Dropbox in some ways, but it syncs my files properly.

[Jialei_D]

Hi,

I am using Dropbox v166.2.551 on MacOS 13.1 (22C65). I have turned off "Dropbox system extension" and "Online-only files on Mac" on the website. BUT, still, I noticed that recently there are files appeared to be online-only. I would like to continue using Selective Sync to manage my projects.

I am wondering if there is a way to permanently disable online-only. Thank you!

Best,

[Jialei_D]

I am having the exact same issue. It's just so frustrating. I am wondering if you could share which competing service you chose? I would like to make the switch. 

Thank you.

[Cherucruz]

I’m not sure if it’s a great idea for me to directly mention it here, but I’ll say that while Dropbox falls flat on my Mac now, the competitor I switched to is tightly integrated with MacOS. Basically, it is a “Cloud Drive” product that “I” found was preinstalled on my Mac.

It has worse Windows support, but so it goes. I barely use my Windows machine for work anyways, I really just needed reliable sync on my Mac.