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Forum Discussion
Smart Sync and Quick Preview on Mac
Smart Sync causes my quick preview function (spacebar) to not function properly on my Mac. I can't preview thumbnails, or quick preview any videos or photos. Any ideas why this happens?
Likely because you're trying to preview a file that doesn't exist on your computer.
When you set a file to Online Only, the only thing that's left of that file on your computer is the necessary information to make it appear in the folder. Since there's no content in the file, your OS (nor any other program) is able to preview it.
Remember, when you set a file to Online Only, the file is removed from the computer leaving behind only a marker file. In order to access that file, whether it be to open and edit it or simply preview it, the file needs to be on the computer (Smart Sync doesn't allow you to open files directly from the Dropbox servers). When you open a file, it's synced back to your local drive and then opened as normal. When you're done with the file, if you want it to be online-only again, you need to mark it as such.
This has been an ongoing issue for quite some time. Dropbox has no interest in fixing this...
As a paying Dropbox Business customer (2 business accounts) this doesn't sounds like good business. This is a major usability issue. :(
Yeah our team pays $1800 a year for busienss dropbox. we always worked locally on external hardrives as we have 800Gb of data and we all work on laptop with less space. we just used selective sync and everything was local and it was great. Someone had the idea of doing smart sync and only having what you are workign on local and everyting else online only so we could ditch th eexternals. Sounded great but as a designer I hit spacebar to activate previews quicklook feature a gazillion times a day. the moment we swapped to smart sync two things broke:
1: you coudl no longer unmount or eject the external hardrive. it would freeze finder into a catastofic failer EVERYTIME you tired. thats a huge probloem of course. I know dropbox doesnt want you working on externals but its the only option. without smart sync.
2: the mement we turned on smart sync. Like veryone else in this thread. the quick look function of prievew stopped working when viewing files within your dropbox folder. it worked anywhwere else on the hardrive, but if you would be in th edropbox folder then it would glitch out and stop showing the icon thumbnail, and the larger preview. This happens whether the file is online only or Local... it doesnt matter. symart sync and preview DONT get along at all. the horrible thing is... after it glithces the problem persists. it basicly stalls out the cache for priview or something. you cna close dropbox and then right on yoru desctip all filetypes loose there thumnail in the file icon itself as well as the ability to preview the content. The only fixes are restarting preview in a way that replaces the cache directory. Either computer restart, force quiting finder itself, or as mentioned previously manually deleting the cache databasee. then everyting goes back to normal as long as you are on yoru computer ANYWHERE other then the dropbox folder. as soon as you go in you have moments of brilliance fallowed by thumbnail loss entirely once again. the time it takes to crash varies from a few second to a few miutes. but it ALWAYS happens.
This has to be fixed... my biggest gripe is that it isnt of course.. when you are dealing with 100ks of thousands of files you have to be able to preview what they content is of course. what is this 1990? Fix yoru [profanity removed by moderation] and quit blaming apple OS. you made smart sync. fix it. DONT TELL ME "you can't preview the online only files, becuase they are just a shadow placeholder, with folder structure and file name, nothing more." this ISNT TRUE, as after you restart finder and get preview working again for a moment... online only files can be previewed. they get a file thumbmnail icon and you can see it larger and quicklook the file. So dont feed us a line of tech [profanity removed by moderation] that there isnt an embedded thumbnail in the shadow file. if ther wasnt you woudl never get a preview. but we do... Smart sync is GARBAGE in the modern era if you cant view the files it is managing without fully opening them or going online to dropbox.com... NOBODY goes to yoru web interface when you can work locally in your computers OS. nobody.I have the same issue. High Sierra. My coworker has the same computer but in Mojave and has the exact same problem. Relaunching the Finder works, for a little while, then back to not being able to preview neither what I have in my computer or what's online.
I know nobody cares but hey maybe if enough of us comment somebody will.
