There is one, but perhaps it’s a minor one. If you have any symlinks in your Dropbox folders, you will get a sync error from the computer where you’ve added the symlink. The Dropbox API will not allow symlinks to be uploaded.
I see this sometimes because I have a folder that I call “Install Files”, which, as it may sound, I use to store (and sync) the install files for apps that I use. Of course if I need an app install for a current app, I’ll just download the latest, but occasionally I’ll need to install something old, or go back to an older version for some reason, so I keep them around. For the most part, this is fine; most of these are .dmg or .zip files and they sync just fine with Maestral. However, sometimes I’ll have an .app file that I can just drag in to the Applications folder, and these files (because they are package files I assume which have embedded symlinks) will give me sync errors with Maestral.
There is an obvious workaround - zipping the files and deleting the .app - but that, so far, is the only thing I’ve noticed with Maestral that has caused any sort of sync error.
Sorry, if I missed something but I searched the entire topic without a result.
My biggest issue after the Dropbox update is that obviously Spotlight is no longer able to indicate the new folder. Before the update it behaved like any other folder and I was able to search for files and folders which immediately stopped working after the update.
Is this just my experience or is there a workaround?
I’m not sure what you mean. Do you mean you can’t find the Dropbox folder itself? Or you can’t search the contents of the Dropbox folder? I have no trouble searching for files in the Dropbox folder. I don’t think I’ve had any reason to search for the Dropbox folder itself since it is in the Finder sidebar.
If this is true, I’m speechless. I effectively put my entire home directory in Dropbox. To have Spotlight fail to index that after “the upgrade” would be like stepping back >20 years in technology.
I read a bunch of posts more and indeed one user provided a solution which worked for me on two different MacBooks which both were suffering from this problem over Months now since I didn’t had time before to take care about it.
You first know how cool Spotlight works after this (quite unnecessary) experience.
I just tried it with the Dropbox folder itself which didn’t help. Also the re-indexing routine from Clean My Mac didn’t work even though it was recommended from another user in the same thread.
I’m just happy that it worked for me using the entire drive and I think refreshing the Spotlight indexing this way has no disadvantage.
This could be totally unrelated to the current topic. But note that my Dropbox still has not migrated my data out of my home directory, the way they claimed they would. Having read this bug(?) / behavior change, I’m wondering if that was impacting my experience, and if upgrading my OS is going to finally move my Dropbox…?
I don’t think it should trouble you. This just means that apps can sync data using iCloud even if your organization has a policy that disables iCloud Drive. Previously apps that tried to sync would get an error.
Apps can sync data to iCloud without exposing the data files to iCloud Drive. Just as the Notes app, Reminders, Calendar, and other stock apps do.
Just as an example, I use the journaling app DayOne. Their data doesn’t appear in iCloud Drive, but it still syncs to my other devices (iPhone, iPad, and my Macs).
my Dropbox still has not migrated my data out of my home directory, the way they claimed they would. Having read this bug(?) / behavior change, I’m wondering if that was impacting my experience, and if upgrading my OS is going to finally move my Dropbox…?
I don’t think it’s related. I think Dropbox is taking its time rolling out the new client. One of my Macs only switched to the new Dropbox last week, even though it has been on Ventura almost as long as Ventura was released.
I hear what you’re saying, and I’m aware of that, but the linked article says:
In previous versions of macOS and iOS, when iCloud Drive is manually disabled in System Settings or the Settings app, this also turns off iCloud (i.e. CloudKit) database access for third-party apps, even if they don’t use an iCloud Drive folder. This is despite the fact that iCloud syncing of Apple’s own stock apps remains unaffected.
So it sounds like it’s explicitly contradicting what you’re saying. But I don’t understand what APIs are involved to know if that’s the case or not.
What I’ve been wondering is if Dropbox queries the status of my iCloud Drive settings (and therefore its ability to use iCloud apparently) and select where to store the content based on that.
As far as I know, that’s a separate thing. Dropbox isn’t using CloudKit to sync your files to your Mac. That’s storing using the new CloudStorage APIs for the Mac, not CloudKit. Coincidental name.
To underscore what @ddmiller is saying, these changes are all about iCloud, Apple’s syncing service. Dropbox isn’t using iCloud at all, it has its own cloud infrastructure and syncing. Unfortunately the word ‘cloud’ is widely used for all these internet services (and Apple’s MacOS API), but the presence or not of that little ‘i’ is very important. The changes in the new OSes relate only to iCloud, nothing to do with any other cloud syncing system.
Thank you, and I get it. And my concern my be misplaced. But to my point, “CloudKit” doesn’t have an “i” in it either, but it was affected by iCloud Drive.
Short of having an Apple Developer in the audience, we may just have to play wait and see. If I learn anything, I’ll post back :-)
One thing that really worries me about “back porting iOS-based architecture to macOS” is some of the sandboxing and apparent memory management. One thing I like about macOS apps is that they MAINTAIN THEIR STATE. All the time. iOS apps, on the other hand, seem to forget their state All. The. Time. My classic reference is Music.app. I have a sizable music library synced with iTunes Match. On my iPhone, I navigate where I want to within my music library (Not Apple Music!), for example, to Artists, choose an artist, and begin playing an album. I expect that the navigation state of the app will be maintained, such that when I finish playing the album, I can exit “now playing” and be right back to that artist’s albums, so I can select the next chronological album if I want to (yes, this happens often.) Yet this is not the case all the time, and it is completely random as to when the browse state will revert back to the Browse screen, necessitating a trip to Library> Artists> again to review albums. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason, either time, connection state (to Lightning for charging, for example.) As you can imagine, this is a royal PITA in a car with no Car Play, though I doubt Car Pay is a fix. Also, I cannot ask Siri to do this for me, because what if I don’t remember the name of the next chronological album? Or, and sometimes more importantly, Siri will take me to Apple Music, and I don’t want to go there. Why should I have to say “Siri, play X album from my library”? Also, you can’t do everything vocally esp. with Siri, 'cos she’s gonna screw it up. But I digress…
Or on Failbook, I mean Facebook. Say I want to reply to something (especially on iPadOS) and I decide to switch to Safari to grab a link to copy into to my reply. When I switch back to Failbook, I mean Facebook, it’s completely forgotten where I was in the middle of typing a reply. I usually attribute this behavior to Failbook, I mean Facebook, being a completely shite app designed solely to MAKE me always navigate everywhere all the time for eyeballs, but I can’t help shake the feeling that iOS/ipadOS unloads app states WAY too frequently.
If this kind of thing starts happening on macOS, I swear to god I’m going to storm Cupertino. Or maybe just quit life and be a hermit in the woods…
Let’s keep this focused on Dropbox and not veer into the weeds about architecture. The branch about iCloud is already teetering on the edge—what’s true of iCloud Drive is generally unrelated to anything using the File Provider Extension.
