Integrations
Find solutions to issues with third-party integrations from the Dropbox Community. Share advice and help members with their integration questions.
For the past few months I've been having issues with image previews not loading on my Mac in Quick Look, Finder previews or icon thumbnails. I have experienced the problem on both Mac OS High Sierra and Mojave. My colleagues also seem to be experiencing the same issue.
I finally took the time this week to figure out what is causing the issue. As far as I can tell the problem is caused by Dropbox Finder integration. As soon as I turned off Dropbox finder integration (and restart the machine) file previews and Quick Look work perfectly.
For now I'm keeping Dropbox Finder integration turned off - I'm a designer and image previews are incredibly useful. I'd prefer to be able to enable Dropbox Finder integration as the sync status icons are useful.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a fix?
What's the reverse of this should they come up with a solution?
Jay
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so, give it a Like below to let us know.
Need help with something else? Ask me a question!
Find Tips & Tricks Discover more ways to use Dropbox here!
Interested in Community Groups? Click here to join!
I have had the same problem for months since I've started using the "local / online" features of the Dropbox finder integration. It sometimes work but most of the time quicklook is not available for the recently synced files.
Screencapture here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/qcam8gjopv1yilj/Capture%20d%27%C3%A9cran%202019-01-09%2016.09.37.png?dl=0
Don't use the comman that starts with "touch", the first and 3rd commands work right away without system restart.
rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator
qlmanage -r
Thank you! That was sooooo annoying.
Found that even iif you delete the qlgenerator it will be again on place because Dropbox app install it again, so is neccesary to rename the plugin inside the app content
mv /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Resources/DropboxQL.qlgenerator /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Resources/_DropboxQL.qlgenerator
That way Dropbox can't copy it again to the Quicklook plugins folder.
NOTE: Any way do this at your risk.
Jay,
I'm having this issue all the time, it's very annoying.
I've contacted support, and I've disabled Finder Integration in addition to running these two commands.
qlmanage -r
qlmanage -r cache
Guys over at St. Clair Software have a great fix for this:
https://www.stclairsoft.com/blog/2018/07/17/getting-rid-of-the-dropbox-quicklook-plugin/
It turns out that a new beta of DropBox installs its own QuickLook generator plugin that overrides the system-supplied plugin for generating a number of file and image formats – including those MS Office files. OK, fine – just delete it, right? That worked until he restarted his Mac, then DropBox launched at login and promptly (and silently) reinstalled its QuickLook plugin again. I guess it knows what’s best for us, eh?
After a little thought, we arrived at this solution:
Fortunately, QuickLook is smart enough to realize that an empty file isn’t going to help it generate previews, and just defaults back to the other plugins it has. Problem solved!
The easiest way to do this is to open Terminal and execute these three commands:
rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator qlmanage -r
A nice simple solution once you get it figured out. I imagine this is one of those problems that’s going to crop up for a lot of people but isn’t quite obnoxious enough to get them to hunt down a solution. So there you go
- - - - - - - -
Here's what I did:
But also note that, unfortunately, QL will still NOT work if a file is not local on your hard drive. Still, I'll take what I can get.
I am running Dropbox v67.4.83 and have Mojave 10.14.3 installed on both my 2018 Macbook pro and my iMac 5K.
I have tried both suggestions of all 3
rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator qlmanage -r
And the other suggested where you miss out the second starting with touch and neither have worked.
Doesn't seem to matter if I deactivate Finder Integration or not.
I am still left with Excel files and Word files not showing icon preview in and Finder view - not list, not column, not icon view, not gallery view.
Does anyone have an up to date fix that actually works now? I am really wishing I never upgraded as I think the Local/Online functionality has really screwed things up with the quicklook plugin.
Hi there!
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for a ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!