Dropbox Not working after restart: Reconnecting to the internet. This may take a moment.

[Domscillator]

I have been experiencing a very frustrating issue with Dropbox the past few days.

Issue: After restarting my Mac Studio (MacOS 13.6.5), Dropbox always gets stuck with the message: 

Reconnecting to the internet. This may take a moment.

• No VPN
• No Firewall
• Home Network
• Fully updated Dropbox

The thing that is baffling is that :

1. If you Quit and restart Dropbox it works immediately but if you restart the computer the issue appears again
2. If you wait for a long time Dropbox eventually connects and syncs. But it takes a long time
3. On the same computer, about a week ago, Dropbox was syncing instantly after reboot. 

I have tried already reinstalling and deleting the cache folder.

Is this a known issue that's going on at the moment>

Many thanks

[Megan]

Hi @Domscillator, I hope you're doing well!

Can you please let me know the app's exact status and version as shown in your menu bar?

Also, could you try unlinking and relinking your account through the app's preferences? Maybe that will do the trick.

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

[kkkkkkirk]

exact same issue here, the only difference is I am constantly on VPN.

dropbox desktop app has been working fine on my PC for years and this started to happen just a couple days ago on both my personal PC and work PC.

have tried 1) turning off firewalls; 2) restart PC; 3) reinstall dropbox but no luck.

[kolella]

exact same issue on mine. MacBook pro M3 with Sonoma 14.4. It happens after a restart and after a long sleep. Only way to make it work again is by completely closing and reopening the desktop app v 194.4.6267

[Oblique]

I have the same issue - same config as Kolella

[Jay]

Hi everyone, have you already contacted the support team directly regarding this matter?

[kolella]

I've done it and the help I got was: "Okay. I can suggest an advanced reinstall of the application, this might help with the issue." I've already done a reinstall of the application deleting all of dropbox folders ... plist ... cache ... ~/Library/CloudStorage ... but support insists in sending me those advanced instructions by mail. I'm now waiting for the mail ...

[kolella]

I've reinstalled as per advanced instructions (https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall) and issue is still present.

Closing the dropbox app on the menu bar and reopening it solves the problem until next reboot

- if you have a Mac with apple silicon processor than don't download dropbox through the previous link because it download's intel version of the app but download from https://www.dropbox.com/desktop)

[kolella]

I've "solved" my problem with a small workaround. Disabled Dropbox startup item and created a Mac shortcut startup item that launches dropbox after a delay of 30 seconds.  I will wait for an app update to try dropbox's auto startup method again. I don't know if it's a dropbox bug but it is probably starting before internet connection is established and it's unable to reconnect on it's own

[Domscillator]

Hi Megan,

Dropbox version:

Yes, I've already tried unlinking and relinking. It didn't help. As someone mentioned previously, if I don't have Dropbox as log in item and launch it with a bit of delay after MacOS has launched, everything works. 

So it's not a VPN issue (I don't use VPN anyway), it seems Dropbox tries to find a connection straight away when MacOS boots and if the connection is not there, it stalls.