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Forum Discussion
Spotlight Search Doesn't Link to Files in Dropbox in macOS 13 Ventura
After upgrading to macOS Ventura, I was prompted to upgrade to "Dropbox for macOS 12". I proceeded with that, it moved my Dropbox folder to ~/Library/CloudStorage and confirmed all was successful. No...
- That’s the same problem I had. I solved it by doing a complete clean install of dropbox. You may not need to do all of this, but to be safe, in Dropbox settings Selective Sync uncheck all of your folders and wait for them to be removed from your Mac. Once that’s done, unlink your Mac from Dropbox preferences. You should see the Dropbox getting started screen. Quit Dropbox and move the app to the Trash. Remove all dropbox files from ~/Library being careful to look at the path name. Only remove things that are within a Dropbox parent folder. Look in library application support, and library preferences. Empty the Trash. Restart your Mac. Reinstall Dropbox from dropbox.com. Once reinstalled, to make things faster sync only one small folder and wait for the prompt that new Dropbox for macOS 12 is available. You should see the message within a few minutes of reinstalling Dropbox. Allow it to upgrade and migrate your files to the new location. Once that’s done you can then sync all your folders. Let your Mac index itself and the problem should be solved.
When I search for files with Spotlight that are in my Dropbox folder, Spotlight correctly shows files that are in my Dropbox folders, but when I click on such files, nothing happens. Looking at the corresponding file in the Dropbox folder from Finder, I can see an icon from Dropbox: hovering over that icon, I see the message "couldn't communicate with a helper application". This happens both for files that are "online only" and for files that have already been downloaded (or set as "offline". I'm pretty sure that's been happening since the update to Ventura 13.1 (22C65).
If I simply double click on a file in a Dropbox folder from Finder, I can open that file (if it's offline, Dropbox first downloads the file).
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Thanks for reporting this, lorebett.
Can you try to rebuild the Spotlight index, to see if that helps at all?
It does help to rebuild the index, but only for the first few minutes; after a few minutes (maybe after the index has been completely rebuilt?) the problem shows up exactly the same, again.
To summarize, this does not fix the issues.
Please, keep in mind that this makes Spotlight with Dropbox completely unusable...
Same problem here on Ventura. All iWork documents are broken in Spotlight and the new Silicon Dropbox. Rebuild Spotlight doesn't help.
Another problem is that Dropbox does not automatically download the files. That's just annoying.
Even after completely removing both the Dropbox app and the Dropbox directory, the dead entries remain in Spotlight:
This is very annoying, as my Spotlight is now spammed with dead entries. How can we get rid of them? I tried re-indexing Spotlight using "mdutil -i on /" and "mdutil -E /" but the dead entries left over by Dropbox remain.
