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Policy changes to new files as online-only with File Provider on MacOS?
I am trying to determine the current policy for when files become online-only on a macOS machine that uses File Provider. As I understand it, using File Provider is optional for now, but may become mandatory in the future. I have used Dropbox for over a decade, and currently sync a personal account between 2x Windows devices, 2x Macs, 1 iPhone and 1 Android. My account has 255k files in it, so I'm towards the "power user" side. One Mac is my "main" one, and another is my "personal" one. The personal Mac is on macOS 12.7.6. The main Mac is macOS 15.2. This morning, I switched the personal mac to use File Provider to check its behaviour. In many previous discussions of File Provider, I have seen the official policy "Files added to your Dropbox account from another device or that are shared by another user will default to online-only." However, this does not appear on the main support page: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes , which is listed as updated last Nov 2024. I am curious; is this no longer the official policy, or has this just been rephrased so the behaviour is just implicit? The (possibly defunct) policy sentence appears in these two places, for example: https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101001016/files-and-folders-have-a-cloud-icon/649915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34657560 Note that on my personal mac, now using File Provider, I have right-clicked on the top-level folder at `~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox` and clicked on "Make available offline". There's some indication that this overrides the (possibly defunct) online-only policy, but what is it? As another sub-question, I use selective sync, as one of my top-level folders in Dropbox contains large asset backups, and I sync it to none of my computers. I am really unclear how this conflicts with the "Make available offline" feature in Finder.