Did you update your Dropbox client yet (Mac)?

I’m on Ventura (13.1)

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Same here, and I also have V.163.4.5456 of Dropbox.

I know that with Evernote, I don’t always get the latest update right away. It’s like they roll it out in stages. I wonder if that’s what’s happening here?

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My experience with FileProvider-based storage, albeit using CloudKit: Keep It v2+ uses it and it’s great. I can add files en masse to Keep It in the Finder and iOS can see everything in the Files app. No problem syncing.

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I’ve been running Nextcloud on a 2014 refurbished thin client (Fujitsu business trade-in) with a 500Gb ssd and 8 gb of ram that I bought off our local equivalent of e-bay. The pc is very small, very quiet and runs Ubuntu Server (now 22.04). Nextcloud runs in a docker container with mariadb and redis. The whole setup typically uses around 25-30 watts, barely runs the CPU over 30%, ever, and does not run very hot.

So far in a year it’s been absolutely solid for me, the only hickup was completely down to me putting it behind a Traefik reverse proxy and forgetting to add the domain to the “trusted domains”

Overall file, agenda and task syncing is very fast and reliable, and for me has not missed a step. Actually I found file syncing far quicker than in iCloud so I have now switched iCloud syncing for most of my machines to Nextcloud as well, leaving 1 machine on iCloud to ensure Documents. Desktop and admin files can easily sync between iOS and macOS devices (the machine syncs Nextcloud into the documents, desktop and admin folders on my iCloud drive)

I sync all files to my Synology with their Cloudsync app, and back it up from there with Hyperbackup (encrypted) to my backup storage provider (Synology C2)
As an easy fallback I have a raspberry pi at my mother’s house attached to her cable modem with a 2TB external ssd attached, and I rsync my data there as well through a Tailscale connection. (where I live there’s no bandwidth cap)

I know the setup does require a bit of admin time from me (around 30 minutes per month), and a basic understanding of how Docker and Linux operate, but all in all if I’d have to choose again between paying 24,- per month (iCloud extra storage + Dropbox) and running my own I woud definitely do this again. My whole setup cost me around 300 Euros for the refurb and the ssd’s and I had the raspberry pi 2 lying around for syncing. So I reckon at the beginning of 2023 I’ve earned back my investment, and am very happy to be in full control of my data again.

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wow, this has a lot for me to take in ( in a good way, as I am not really a techie or coder, just learning along the way - from all of you here :+1: ).

I have an Intel NUC (Zotac) using an old Intel i7 and debian 11 bulleye on it. Currently only have Home Assistant OS running on it.

Definitely want to try installing the Next Cloud linux server on it and somehow (assuming that is is possible to use my Synology DS918+ on the same network as file server), I am currently using ARQ to back up the NAS selected folder to Backblaze B2 bucket)

This may be a good tech project for me. Continue to welcome others’ sharing and suggestions

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I think I read that it is rolled out gradually. So I guess this means the system requirements by MacOS can’t be in full effect yet.

I guess selling bigger SSDs isn’t the only motivation for this, but it’s part of the plan to keep people within the ecosystem. Security is part of that. I guess the security can be better if everything is sandboxed and Apple controls most of the ecosystem and you use their own cloud service instead of another. On the other hand it surely fits their business if third party solutions get less comfortable and less useful by restrictions like these.

I use Dropbox and Box.com (as well as iCloud). Box changed to this model several months ago. The stability has been good - no issues on that front - but there is one limitation that bugs the crud out of me.

It doesn’t seem that you can get file previews (the icons) except for files that are downloaded. Even though the file will show in finder, the icon will be generic until you download it. For images, this is quite frustrating. Also, with Box, there is (was?) a bug that made all file preview icons default to generic. I had to uninstall it from my primary machine, so it’s probably time for me to go back and try again to see if it’s fixed now.

I run nextcloud on my Centos7 server. its awesome. for what dropbox charges, you could get a linode server and run your own with nextcloud.

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this is encouraging. I shall try to install on my debian server based on an Intel NUC

Hope the hardware is good enough and I can get through the linux installation. If not , then I may consider the Linode server option

I updated to the latest client with no issues.

This has been a big discussion in both the MacFamilyTree and Reunion genealogy forums. Most people report no issues other than non-PowerUsers who can’t see their Library folder.

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I’ve heard good things about the Maestral Dropbox client. They had an M1 native silicon version long before Dropbox itself did. I’m thinking I may try it out.

Generally, it seems stable for me. But there is a curious problem I have come across with the spotlight index.

For files in the new Dropbox location, it appears the spotlight index is not available to other apps?

For example, I have a PDF in /Users/[username]/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/

This PDF:

  • file name does return in a Spotlight search
  • filename doesn’t return in a search via Alfred (Alfred settings include that location. If I move the file to a different location, Alfred finds it)
  • doesn’t match a ‘contents’ search in a Hazel rule (if I run the same rule on the same file in a different location, works fine)

Took me a while to identify. No idea if it’s a Dropbox problem, or a limitation of Apple’s new approach to cloud providers.

Thanks for the info. This would ruin Dropbox for me. Anyone know a way around it? I rely on both Dropbox Pro and Alfred.

Found this:

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Now, I’m using Monterey and not Ventura. I just checked; Keep It v2 uses File Provider like Dropbox does, and I was able to search for an item in Keep It with Spotlight.

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uncheck all of your folders and wait for them to be removed from your Mac.

Oh heck no

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Please don’t shoot the messenger :grinning:


I use Google Drive so I haven’t encountered this problem yet. My MBA is a server and, so far, I see two options:

  1. Sync everything to the internal drive and use Hazel to move older/larger files to an external drive.
  2. Move my user directory to an external drive.
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I just got the invitation to upgrade Dropbox, where my files will be moved “to a new secure location.”

Nice secure location, pal. Shame if something happened to it.

(This is a gratuitous joke. As has been observed, Apple seems to be requiring cloud providers to move file locations.)

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I’ve done the “upgrade” on three Macs. In each case, it went very easily and the application notified me when everything was done (in one case, it was almost instantaneous). You end up with a symlink from the old Dropbox location to the new one, so the files are easy to access. If you were using external symlinks to individual files in your Dropbox, then those would need updating. Otherwise, it was pretty painless. It helps that I didn’t have the files on an external drive. I understand that the process isn’t quite so easy if that’s the case.

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