Disabling new icon in context menu on macOS

[danielcompton]

Is there any way to disable the new icon showing up in the right click context menu for Dropbox?

The bright blue colour is really distracting, and not what I need to see on every right click in my system. Dropbox seems to be consistently pushing the boundary of what it can inject into the system.

[Sanchez]

Hey @danielcompton, welcome to our community! 

Well, I’m afraid that we don’t have an option to disable the icon in the context menus. I’d like to pass your comment on to our team though. Can you tell me why you find this new icon distracting? Is it the difference in color from the old icon? Is it the fact that it has two shades of blue? 

Let me know if you’d like. 

Thanks! 

[Daniel C.80]

I think it's just that the colour is distracting. It would be great if Dropbox put it's icon in the Share right-click menu like all of the other applications.

[amorimlb]

I also would like to get rid of it or at least switch to a B&W version. I also think it is distracting, it draws a lot of attention every time we do a simple right click. It is even worse when the icon appears multiple times (see attached picture)! In my opinion it is simply bad design and it doesn't match with the rest of the system, where there is some kind of a design language to be followed, specially when you are injecting stuff into a context menu that belongs to another application...

I would really appreciate if you guys could simply revert that or just give us a "Hide/Disable Dropbox icons from Finder's context menu." option to be checked in the General tab of the Preferences window.Finder's context menu with newest Dropbox icons.

[CliffR]

Seriously?! All this new crap you added to the right click menu needs to GO!! You have no right to insert all that there ABOVE what I regard as more important native functions like Copy/Paste etc!

You need to add a Preference to remove it...  ASAP.

I get that I can get rid of all of it by disabling "Finder Integration" from Dropbox Preferences, but then I lose the up to date and download icons. Those are the only part of that I find useful...

[Takuro]

I agree with the sentiments of the other users. The recent redesign of Dropbox's icon to now be a light box encapsulated in a dark blue circle is a little bit visually jarring to begin with, and to have that in the context menu (including multiple times if right-clicking a file in the Dropbox folder) is very distracting.

While this makes it easier to avoid accidentally clicking it, given the proness to do so in the past due it its proximity to the "move to trash" option, this is not the most graceful design. As somebody else suggest, please consider moving it to the "share" menu as other apps already use. This is the best means to comply with UI consistency within macOS.

In addition, it would be good to consider adding more granular options to Finder integration. I love the ability to see which files are in sync and to have a custom Dropbox icon on my Finder sidebar, for example, but I do not care for the context menus. When I move a file to Dropbox, I want it to be a very deliberate action via a manual drag-and-drop.

Thanks

[Sanchez]

@CliffR, @amorimlb, @Takuro, & @Daniel C.80, 

I have taken your comments and sent them to the appropriate desk for review. I appreciate your thoroughness when describing your issue with our re-branding and the context menus. 

Thanks for taking the time to post your feedback! 

Cheers

[Takuro]

Looking at some older posts in these forums, it turns out the developers of Dropbox did implement a means to disable just the context menu while retaining Finder integration. However, it's a hidden flag and can't be accessed from the settings directly.

You need to open MacOS's Terminal app and enter:

/Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/MacOS/Dropbox --move-to-dropbox=False

[CliffR]

 @Takuro I tried running that command on the command line and it no worky?! I tried it two ways:

1. With Finder Integrations set to OFF: No right click menu items (good). No sync icons next to files (bad).
2. With Finder Integration set to ON: Righ click menu nonsense (bad). No sync icons next to files (bad).

Regardless of that setting, that command has NO obvious effect, other than to spit out a lot of commands on my terminal and which now causes me to wonder wtf it just did to me.

So, that was a fail.

If such "under the hood" settings do actually exist, why not simply attach it to the Drop Box preferences in the form of another check box that says : Enable Finder Right Click Menu Integrations. And have the two things be two settings.

[Takuro]

CliffR
With Finder Integration set to ON: Righ click menu nonsense (bad). No sync icons next to files (bad).

I'm not entirely sure if you perhaps have something else going on. The flag being set here is called "move-to-dropbox" -- it should not have any impact on other Finder integrations like the green sync status icons.

Just to cite my source, this Terminal command came from the following thread a year ago. Multiple people reported it works, and it worked for me.

• Thread: Please add option to remove context menu "Move to Dropbox" in Mac OS