Finder or Spotlight fails to find files or folders in my Mac Dropbox folder. Is there a fix for this?
My Mac (macOS 15.1.1 Sequoia), and Dropbox app are up to date (“… latest version of Dropbox for macOS on File Provider”). The Dropbox folder location is in /Users/myusername/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox.
Is there a “hidden” Spotlight search setting or Finder setting that will allow searches to find items in my Dropbox folder? My Spotlight search settings under “Search Results” have all of the checkboxes selected.
A bit of research on the issue included the following help/information webpages from Apple and Dropbox. Apple’s File Provider Frameworks documentation was incomprehensible. The Dropbox document was informative but not helpful for my issue.
Any thoughts? I wish to continue using Dropbox, having found syncing folders using iCloud unreliable, or at least not “immediately” reliable like Dropbox sync.
The “local copy” of the Dropbox folder in /Users/YourUsername/Dropbox is actually a symlink (or alias or hard link, whatever) to the actual folder that is located in ~/Library/CloudStorage. According the the Dropbox help article listed above, this is normal and is required in current versions of macOS.
User folder contains symlink (or alias, hard link … ):
There is a “new” version of the Dropbox app that uses Apple’s File Provider framework API.
From Dropbox’s support website:
Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is our latest update utilizing Apple’s updated File Provider API to more deeply integrate with macOS and fix issues related to opening online-only files in third-party applications. This update comes with changes required by the API …
Note : While we recommend opting in to the latest version of Dropbox for macOS on File Provider, this migration isn’t required to continue using Dropbox.
Apparently I have the new version of Dropbox that uses the macOS File Provider API, thus the required location of the Dropbox folder in ~/library/Cloudstorage. @Ellis - it appears that your installed version of Dropbox must be the older version.
The thought occurs to me that I might want to revert back to the older version of Dropbox, since I do not need online-only files. All of my files are locally-stored (not online-only) since I have adequate local storage. One exception is the Photos library, which has online-only files in one of my two Macs. Those are not affected by Dropbox, though.
Does anyone have thoughts on this? Simply commit keeping my Dropbox files to locally-stored (not online only) and revert to the older Dropbox app. Would this clear up the Finder or Spotlight search problem?
Edit: What about Maestral? Should I consider switching to the Maestral app, which allows placement of the Dropbox folder anywhere?
Do you have the Dropbox app installed on your computer? If so click on your name then click on “Manage Hard Drive Space” and make sure “Dropbox on Hard drive” is selected. I have the latest version of Dropbox, v212.4.5767, using Sequoia.
Interesting. I use Alfred but I just checked spotlight. Spotlight found all my files in my Dropbox directory. It is in the same directory as yours. You could always try Alfred.
Good idea, but while doing research I ran across an older post in this MPU forum that described a similar problem in Alfred. I would be willing to try Alfred after I figure out this Dropbox drama. My basic instinct is to keep my Mac life simple, keep 3rd party apps to a minimum manageable level.
It’s disappointing to enjoy Dropbox for so many years without problems, and now changes in macOS result in problems. Not criticizing Apple, I appreciate that the new file system offers benefits including security. I want things to “just work” and to stay simple. And I need to search ALL of my folders, including the Dropbox folder.
On further investigation I realized the Dropbox files are stored in the CloudStorage folder. Open the CloudStorage folder then open the Dropbox folder. See if the Cloud symbol is next to the name of any of the files and folders. Spotlight only indexes files that reside on the drive. If they all have the cloud symbol maybe right clicking on the Dropbox folder and selecting “Make available offline” will download them all? If not individually clicking on the cloud symbol will download them.
All files are local (“available offline”); In Finder, all of the files have the green check icon - there are no Cloud icons. I made sure that the DB settings ensured this.
Understood. But Spotlight apparently is not indexing my local (“available offline”) files.
At this point, I would force Spotlight to reindex the drive(There are instructions on how to do this, found with a Google search). But first, I would use Disk Utility and run “First Aid” and see if that corrects the problem. The other thing I do when faced with an intractable problem, which you probably already have done, is to reboot the computer.
From my experience, this has been an issue for several years. Via Photoshop, I regularly create and overwrite/update images housed in my Dropbox folders (so I can easily share later) and I have a ton of images there. Whenever I’m in the “Save as” interface in Photoshop and try to find the “old” image I want to update, Finder Search never works in finding the existing image in the Dropbox folders. I have to manually scroll to find the image to update (like an animal ). It is so annoying. I do find some solace that it is not just me and my Mac. I’ve raised this to Apple and in Dropbox forums in the past with zero movement on the issue.
). It is so annoying. I do find some solace that it is not just me and my Mac. I’ve raised this to Apple and in Dropbox forums in the past with zero movement on the issue.