Frustrated with Dropbox ever since Apple required these sync apps to move to a new official API. Dropbox was rock solid, always working. Now I see frequent Finder errors or refusal to move files around. I know, “security”, but from sandboxing to this, not convinced locking down macOS actually helps.

@manton I wonder how much of this is Dropbox no longer concentrating on the core file store product. I use a good bit of OneDrive on macOS without these issues.

@mcg Yeah, I don't know. I just know Apple made them change it and now it's not as reliable. Rewriting code that works is usually a bad idea. 🙁

@manton Maestral is great: https://maestral.app

It makes Dropbox work like it used to. Just a folder that syncs.

@manton I’ve been using this app for cloud storage stuff, including Dropbox. So much more elegant and straightforward.

@manton Am I the only one that finds the "Allow access to XYZ Folder" dialogs in modern macOS to be the exact same thing we all dunked on Vista for adding in 2007? UAC I believe it was called?

@manton wasn't this a result of Dropbox's previous iteration where it had kernel access? I remember Duncan being outraged by this at the time (https://medium.com/hackernoon/dropping-dropbox-8e4775154d0a).

@manton yup, we’ve been having really big problems with Google Drive too since they also had to move to the new API. So much more strain on an albeit old server that had coped perfectly before. I wonder if there are optimisations Apple can bring to bear (or maybe they don’t care since they’d prefer us to use first-party iCloud instead)?

@manton if you just want the file sync, I’d recommend switching to Maestral. I’ve been using it since it was mentioned on @atpfm and it’s been rock solid and much less resource intensive than the official Dropbox client

@manton Generally, agreed. For me, Google Drive has been hard. I guess I was using the old way, I moved gigs and 100k files over (consolidating cloud storage) which locked things up. Signed out, signed back in with the new API. Now I have three different Google Drive directories that I need to figure out which is synced from the cloud and which one has local changes before I realized it moved.

And the Finder "Locations" doesn't even display the G folder half the time. 🤷‍♂️

@manton I’ve been avoiding the “upgrade” to the File Provider version for this very reason.

@siracusa Now that I’ve experienced the new version, definitely recommend postponing the upgrade as long as possible. Hopefully it becomes more robust.

@manton @siracusa I wonder how bad iCloud Finder integration would be broken if Apple had to follow their own rules.

@manton Another vote here for Maestral. My Dropbox usage is secondary to iCloud lately but Maestral has always been simple and reliable for me.

@manton if someone suggests Maestral, investigate it with care. It's got bugs unaddressed for months and I found it really messed up my syncing. Nice idea but too many rough edges for me.

@jsnell Good to know, thanks!

@siracusa @manton I was wondering if I was the only one clicking skip for now, not now, remind me later compulsively