Dropbox Wants Users to Vote for Adding M1 Mac Support [Update: Dropbox CEO Responds]

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 28 Oct 2021

Dropbox logo

It has been nearly a year since Apple first launched its Apple Silicon-based Macs. The underlying change in architecture meant that developers needed to update their apps for Apple Silicon. While most popular apps were quick to do so, file syncing and sharing service Dropbox has been dragging its feet in this regard.

Frustrated Dropbox owners have been complaining about the lack of Apple Silicon support for a few months now. One might have thought that Dropbox was working on support for M1 Macs, and it was just taking its own time on this.

As it turns out, the story is entirely different as Dropbox engineers are yet even to consider adding M1 support to their Mac app. A Dropbox representative said in a support thread that “this idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team.”

Dropbox wants more Mac users to first vote for an M1 client before its engineering team starts working on the project. This has really frustrated a lot of Dropbox users who are not happy with the company’s response.

User Grant6 wrote:

This attitude concerns me. I understand the need to prioritize work based on customer demand, and that Apple has cushioned the transition to the M1 chip, but the underlying reality is that Apple’s entire MacBook lineup is now running on the M1 chip, meaning that any Mac app not running on that architecture is running on borrowed time.

While Dropbox for macOS runs just fine under Rosetta 2 translation, it takes more RAM and resources than required. The issue can be easily resolved if Dropbox updates the client with support for M1 Macs.

The Dropbox team has been slow to adopt new features and changes. Their client still does not support Dark Mode, a feature that’s now present in almost every other macOS app. Developer Steve Troughton-Smith suggested in a tweet that there are other variables at play here, but then Google has already updated its Drive sync client with support for M1 Macs.

Update: Dropbox CEO has responded on the matter saying the company is indeed working on an Apple Silicon build of the client.

[Via 9to5Mac]