Dropbox Widely Distributed Its New Shittier Desktop App Today ⇥ twitter.com

You probably noticed the new app when it self-importantly plopped its icon into your MacOS dock today and jumped to the foreground on its own volition. It’s a very rude new app that occupies several times as much hard drive space because it includes a full copy of the Chromium embedded framework.

The poor folks running the Dropbox Support Twitter account have spent the day telling MacOS users that it is not possible to hide or remove the dock icon in MacOS, and helping users disable the new app. Always a good sign on launch day.

Turns out that you can remove the dock icon by disabling the new app. Go to Dropbox Preferences and, under the General tab, change the “Open Folders In” option to “Finder”. Then quit the Dropbox app and drag that icon out of the dock; it should remain in the menu bar and continue syncing.

Also, consider getting rid of your Dropbox account, because this is a symptom of a company with rotten priorities.

Update: Dropbox says that the wide release of the new app was inadvertent and they’re rolling users back to the previous version. A more cynical writer might see this as a way for the company to cover their ass in the wake of a poorly-received update, but I have no evidence to support such an assertion.

Update: Ben Sandofsky:

Quitting the new Dropbox file manager from the dock just hides it. It’s still sitting in the background, consuming resources for no reason. Your only option is to kill all of Dropbox, which includes syncing.

Gross. This app is part of a completely misguided shift in strategy towards an enterprise focus, and I can’t imagine it will be successful.