[FIXED] Disable dropbox updates (Howto + feature request)

Feature Requests
1

I’m sharing this for fellow users as a workaround, but it would be nice to have all this shipped with boxifier.

The problem comes with every dropbox update: for some technical reasons, Boxifier has to update as well, and sync is suspended until boxifier update is installed. Though the Boxifier team makes a great job in terms of reactivity, there is always a lag time (hours to days in the worst case) where we are left without sync. And that happens every time dropbox releases a new fix, which is quite often.

Here’s a solution (windows only), using “software restriction policies”: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201559395-Disable-automatic-updates?flash_digest=509ddbc9093d13a13cf2787dae625b66b67b40e8 . Other solutions for Linux can be found in the same thread. Of course you will need to manually allow dropbox updates from time to time if you don’t want to be banned from sync.

Now for the feature request: As I see it, it would simply prevent Dropbox from updating until boxifier has an available corresponding update installed. Then re-allow Dropbox update, kick in something to dropbox to force refresh (maybe restart the app) end re-ban it for the next version.

By the way: any insights on why Boxifier has to update with every dropbox release?

2 Likes
2

Thank you for this suggestion. This might be very useful as a temporary solution.

By the way: any insights on why Boxifier has to update with every dropbox release?

That is because Boxifier currently integrates with the Dropbox desktop client in order to achieve its functionality. Some people see Boxifier with a simple user interface and ease of use and imagine that it is just some pretty UI on top of some standard Windows commands. It’s not just a pretty interface and it doesn’t use any “standard” commands like symbolic links (symlinks) or anything like that.

What they can’t see just by looking at the pretty interface is that Boxifier has some very deep integration with the Dropbox desktop client. Boxifier is essentially adding a feature to the closed-source Dropbox application, from outside of Dropbox, with no access to Dropbox code and no special treatment from the Dropbox team.

Dropbox doesn’t announce our team in advance when they release a new version so we get the notice through the same channels as you do. Then our team needs to actually test Boxifier with the latest version of Dropbox in order to find out if the changes made by Dropbox will break the Boxifier integration or not.

That being said, we are working on a solution that will no longer be impacted by the changes made to the Dropbox desktop application. Stay tuned!

3

Hi Razvan/Boxifier/ We seem to have the same problem with Boxifier (Power) Server, but don’t see the update alert as it’s not an actively used desktop. When do you hope to have a solution to this problem?

4

The option to disable Dropbox updates is now available in Boxifer 1.5.17 which was released today.

You can check this box in the Boxifier settings window to make sure that Dropbox won’t update.

This box is checked by default when installing Boxifier.

2 Likes
5

Thanks for being so responsive. Much appreciated!

6

Thank you very much.

In future when Boxifier get update, do it offer possibility to update/download/inform Dropbox?

7

Yay!
Big up for the devs!

8

We’ve released Boxifier 1.5.20 which improves the “Block Dropbox updates” feature.