Dropbox indicates 'downloading xx files' _forever_

[Kris J.]

Dear community,

I have a perfectly correct Dropbox installation, no noteworthy issues with illegal filenames and I have performed all possible kinds of troubleshooting.

Even so, every so often, mostly when migrating to a new PC, Dropbox will become stuck in an eternal 'downloading' session.

What bothers me is perhaps not that this happens but that there is apparently no way to check _which_ files are problematic.

It is bewildering to see that the Dropbox desktop client does not offer any kind of decent user-accessible logging or other type of error reporting that would empower end-users to resolve these issues.

What gives?

How can I see which 322 files are problematic in my particular case? Drilling down through thens of thousands of files in the hopes of finding one with a sync issue indicator is really not an option.

Thanks,

Kris

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi Kris, generally symlinks are an issue for files that seem to endlessly download, especially on Macs since they are created often.

Another thing to check out is if you’re running the beta version of the app. 

To install our latest stable version, visit here and uncheck the box next to "Early releases". Then redownload the app. 

Incidentally, which version of the Mac OS are you running?

Keep me posted with any updates!

[Kris J.]

 Thanks for the quick reply @Jay

To give some more context:

I indeed know that symlinks can sometimes cause issues. It might even be the root issue here. That being said though, on different machines with identical selective sync settings, identical DB client SW and OS versions,  one machine will get stuck while the other will not.

Only specific thing here was the DB client release, I was indeed using a pre-release one. I have since downgraded to the latest stable version which I am running, on all machines, on macOS 10.14 (18A377a). Oddly enough that _instantly_ resolved the issue so I am quite happy (and appreciative of the suggestion).

That being said, I assume there must be a way to figure out/display what the Dropbox client is trying to achieve by enabling some kind of Debug logging or by knowing which part of the Dropbox specific file attributes you need to look at.

It would make everything so much easier to troubleshoot... Is there really nothing to see such info?

[Jay]

Glad to hear that the syncing problem was resolved by downgrading to the stable version!

Currently, there isn’t an option to see the actively syncing files via the desktop app. The only way would be to see the files in the Dropbox folder with the syncing icons to determine which ones were syncing, though if you have multiple subfolders and locations, this won’t be easy!

[Kris J.]

Hi @Jay,

I understand such functionality might not currently be available although, the fact that 'sync badges' are overlaid on file icons must indicate there is some kind of mechanism which allows sync status to be obtained (I suspect some kind of attribute). That should allow one to programatically obtain an overview of potentially problematic files...

Whatever may be the case, given how frequent reports of 'permanent syncing' or general sync issues are, it would be nice to consider this for a feature update of some sort.

Users (and often customers!) should be empowered to troubleshoot their system in the event of trouble instead of having to resort to the general 'stop dropbox/unlink/reinstall/ ...' scenarios. It would save a lot of time and effort.

[Jay]

I’ve forwarded this as a suggestion for our dev team to see and consider this in future updates to the Dropbox desktop application!

[rrrr1]

=X

[Kris J.]

Any news on this? These issues still occur from time to time and are very annoying...

[sehamel]

I also have this problem, and its very frustrating.  I am running Windows 10, Dropbox version 85.4.155, it says downloading 317 files and uploading 44 files... I am connected to the interenet and everything seems fine.  Restarting the computer or dropbox doesn't help.  There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the files that won't sync.  Some are pdfs that haven't been touched in years,  in other cases a fold shows as not synched... but all the files inside show as synched (and hidden files are showing).  Any help would be appreciated...

[Daphne]

Thanks for joining the discussion here @sehamel!

As a first step, would you mind trying the following to see if this does the trick:

1. Click the Dropbox icon in your system tray.
2. Click the profile pic/initials icon in the top right of the window.
3. Choose "Preferences..."
4. Go to the "Account" tab.
5. While holding the Space bar key, click "Fix Hardlinks".

If this doesn't resolve the issue, please follow the steps again and instead click "Fix permissions". The app might need to sync for a while after doing this, so please just keep an eye out for any progress.

Let me know how it goes - thanks!