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Forum Discussion
Andrew D.4
7 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Dropbox Finder integration breaks Quick Look and thumbnails - Mac OS Mojave 10.14
For the past few months I've been having issues with image previews not loading on my Mac in Quick Look, Finder previews or icon thumbnails. I have experienced the problem on both Mac OS High Sierra ...
- 6 years agoIf anyone else is experiencing this issue still, please could you reach out to our support team directly in order for them to investigate this matter further.Feel free to attach a link to this thread as well in your email to the team.Thanks in advance!
alexolmsted
6 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Guys over at St. Clair Software have a great fix for this:
https://www.stclairsoft.com/blog/2018/07/17/getting-rid-of-the-dropbox-quicklook-plugin/
It turns out that a new beta of DropBox installs its own QuickLook generator plugin that overrides the system-supplied plugin for generating a number of file and image formats – including those MS Office files. OK, fine – just delete it, right? That worked until he restarted his Mac, then DropBox launched at login and promptly (and silently) reinstalled its QuickLook plugin again. I guess it knows what’s best for us, eh?
After a little thought, we arrived at this solution:
- Delete the DropBox QuickLook generator plugin
- Create an empty file at that location to prevent DropBox from reinstalling it
Fortunately, QuickLook is smart enough to realize that an empty file isn’t going to help it generate previews, and just defaults back to the other plugins it has. Problem solved!
The easiest way to do this is to open Terminal and execute these three commands:
rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator qlmanage -r
A nice simple solution once you get it figured out. I imagine this is one of those problems that’s going to crop up for a lot of people but isn’t quite obnoxious enough to get them to hunt down a solution. So there you go
- - - - - - - -
Here's what I did:
- Turn OFF "Finder Integration" in DB preferences & Restart to check to see if QL is working. (Mine wasn't so I continued to #2)
- Open Terminal and typed in commands from above & restarted
- My QL was now working! So then, as an experiment, I went back and tuned ON finder Integration in DB.
- Now BOTH are operating correctly. Let's see how long this will last :)
But also note that, unfortunately, QL will still NOT work if a file is not local on your hard drive. Still, I'll take what I can get.
- WesHoover5 years agoNew member | Level 2
alexolmsted wrote:Guys over at St. Clair Software have a great fix for this:
https://www.stclairsoft.com/blog/2018/07/17/getting-rid-of-the-dropbox-quicklook-plugin/
...
Here's what I did:
- Turn OFF "Finder Integration" in DB preferences & Restart to check to see if QL is working. (Mine wasn't so I continued to #2)
- Open Terminal and typed in commands from above & restarted
- My QL was now working! So then, as an experiment, I went back and tuned ON finder Integration in DB.
- Now BOTH are operating correctly. Let's see how long this will last :)
But also note that, unfortunately, QL will still NOT work if a file is not local on your hard drive. Still, I'll take what I can get.
✅ This worked for me 100%... and, yeah, I don't really mind the "online-only" files not having quicklook previews.Running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 and Dropbox v94.4.384
- Deli-cious F.6 years agoHelpful | Level 6
I am running Dropbox v67.4.83 and have Mojave 10.14.3 installed on both my 2018 Macbook pro and my iMac 5K.
I have tried both suggestions of all 3
rm -r ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator touch ~/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator qlmanage -r
And the other suggested where you miss out the second starting with touch and neither have worked.
Doesn't seem to matter if I deactivate Finder Integration or not.
I am still left with Excel files and Word files not showing icon preview in and Finder view - not list, not column, not icon view, not gallery view.Does anyone have an up to date fix that actually works now? I am really wishing I never upgraded as I think the Local/Online functionality has really screwed things up with the quicklook plugin.
- alexolmsted6 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Hey just curious, you are trying to use QuickLook on LOCAL files correct? If finder integration is ON then there will be a green checkmark on bottom right of icon (in icon view).
If these are online only (cloud icon) QuickView will NOT work.
LMK how it goes!
-A
- Deli-cious F.6 years agoHelpful | Level 6
Hey alexolmsted Yes I have Dropbox set to Local, I am not using Online Only and with Finder Integration on there is NO GREEN CHECKMARK in the bottom right of icon in icon view as you say.
To see that you would have to right click and open the menu and then select Smart Sync and see that Local has a green circle and tick.
However that is not my real issue
I am noticing that there is major weird issues with icon preview in List view. Column view shows icon previews but list view wont do it unless you select View Options and then change from Small to Large icon size. Then the icon previews show up. This seems to affect mainly the new Microsoft files but also PDF's
Odd thing is that even after running the 3 commands (including the touch one) the Quicklookplugin generator file has returned and shows up in Library-Quicklook
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