Dropbox Syncing Without My Permission

[Cendrillon]

Hi!  I am running into a potential problem with Dropbox.  When I started up my Windows 10 PC this evening, the Dropbox desktop app on my screen immediately started syncing, even though I had not prompted it to do so.  I quickly clicked "Pause syncing", and then selected "Indefinitely".  Now, the Dropbox desktop app on the lower right corner of my screen has a little yellow circle on it with a pair of vertical lines indicating that syncing has paused and is still in pause mode.  I want to do a reset so that the app will no longer be in pause mode, but I do not want it to resume syncing, either.  How do I do this?

[Walter]

Hey @Cendrillon; thanks for posting on our Community and happy Friday!

To directly get to the chase, instead of pausing the syncing process, you can quit the app instead.

For future reference, if you don't want the desktop app to automatically start upon booting your computer, you can turn the relevant option off through the app's preferences. 

Let me know if this helped!

[Cendrillon]

Hi, Walter!  Thank you so much for your reply!  I followed your advice.  I first went to the desktop app Preferences and made sure that "Start Dropbox on system startup" and "Open the desktop app when starting Dropbox" were unchecked.  Then, I quit Dropbox. 

Being the experimenter I am, I reopened the Dropbox desktop app to ensure that I had done everything necessary, but the little yellow circle with the pair of lines is still there.  How do I do a reset so that my Dropbox desktop app isn't going to forever be in "Pause syncing" mode?

[Jay]

Hi @Cendrillon, you could resume syncing in the desktop app, and then immediately quit the app.

This way the only way files will sync to your account is when the app is running. 

Just out of curiosity, is there a reason you don't want the app to sync automatically, and only when you choose to have the app running?

[Cendrillon]

Hi, Jay!  Thanks for joining the thread!  Yes, there is a reason I don't want the app to sync automatically, and only when I run the app.  The simple reason is, I only have the basic account with 2GB capacity, so I don't want the app to sync my entire computer automatically.  I am taking an online GIS course, and I am going to be creating some GIS documents.  I only want to back up my GIS documents to Dropbox.  I don't want my entire computer backed up to Dropbox.  So I will sync my GIS files to Dropbox when I am ready.  When I'm not deliberately syncing files to Dropbox, I would prefer the app to be shut down and not syncing, if that makes any sense.  I am still very new to Dropbox and syncing services in general and am not 100% clear on how it works.  😕

[Jay · Accepted solution]

The Dropbox desktop application would only sync other computer folders (namely Desktop, Documents and Downloads) if you enabled the computer backup feature.

If it's disabled, all that would be synced are the files in the Dropbox folder itself. It doesn't sync your entire computer, as this feature isn't available on Dropbox.

[Cendrillon]

Oh, OK.  That makes sense now.  Thank you, Jay!  🙂

[Jay]

Not a problem, @Cendrillon, if you need any more details, feel free to message back.

Enjoy your week!