How to stop showing the Dropbox green checkmarks across every photo?

Question

It's good that Dropbox shows its blue icon to indicate a file is currently getting sync'ed ... however the big green check-marks which are shown to indicate the file has finished its sync are entirely unnecessary and obstructive especially since they are shown in perpetuity

I am on Ubuntu and following technique will temporarily remove the green checkmarks simply by removing the offending Dropbox green check-mark file

cd ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-23.3.16/images/emblems
mv emblem-dropbox-uptodate.icon emblem-dropbox-uptodate.icon~ignore
mv emblem-dropbox-uptodate.png emblem-dropbox-uptodate.png~ignore

This is a temporary fix since checkmarks will reappear upon the next Dropbox app update which are frequent.

Does anyone know how to disable these green check marks?

As a band-aid, until the root cause is fixed, I execute this bash script to make the offending green checkmark image files go away

#!/bin/bash

#  remove Dropbox green checkmark files if they exist

cd ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-*/images/emblems/

green_icon=emblem-dropbox-uptodate.icon
green_png=emblem-dropbox-uptodate.png

[[ -f "${green_icon}" ]] && mv "${green_icon}" "${green_icon}"~ignore

[[ -f "${green_png}"  ]] && mv "${green_png}"   "${green_png}"~ignore

Answer 1

It is possible to hide Dropbox's overlay icons, but the process is different depending on your operating system. Unfortunately, I could only find instructions on disabling the icon on Windows and Mac.

Windows

1. Open Windows Registry Editor (Win + R, type in regedit, hit Enter).

2. Then go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

3. Under ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers key you will find keys of Dropbox, SkyDrive, and any other service that you may have installed on your computer.

4. For Dropbox, simply rename the key DropboxExt1 to something like DropboxExt1-D so Windows cannot find the key value in the registry.

5. Once done, restart your computer, or restart explorer using Task Manager.

That’s it. You won’t find any more overlay icons on your synced files. To get the icons back, remove the text that you appended on the key(s).

• Via SumTips.com

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Mac OS

Open Finder and locate the Dropbox application, which you likely have stored in your Applications folder. Right-click on it and select Show Package Contents.

You'll see a lone folder titled Contents. Open it and then open the PlugIns folder. Inside the PlugIns folder will be a lone file, garcon.appex. Right-click on this file and again select Show Package Contents.

Again, you'll see a lone folder titled Contents. Open it and then open the Resources folder. Inside will be a number of folders and four overlay files. Change the name of the overlay-uptodate.icns file, which is the file for the green check mark icons. I just added edit to the end of it. This way, if I find I miss the feeling of warmth and security that green sea of check marks provides, I can just go back and remove my edit suffix and return the file name to its original name, thus restoring Dropbox's green check marks in Finder.

You will need to relaunch Finder for the change to take effect. Hold down the Option key and right-click the Finder icon in the Dock, and then click Relaunch.

When Finder returns, your Dropbox folder will be free of the green check marks.

• Via cnet.com

Answer 2

on linux I just execute the following script to make those green icons disappear (until next Dropbox update ;-()

#!/bin/bash

# ... on OSX look at   finder -> applications -> dropbox -> Show Package Contents -> Resources -> overlay-update.icons  <--- rename xxx.~ignore


cd ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-*/images/emblems/

green_icon=emblem-dropbox-uptodate.icon
green_png=emblem-dropbox-uptodate.png

[[ -f "${green_icon}" ]] && mv "${green_icon}" "${green_icon}"~ignore

[[ -f "${green_png}"  ]] && mv "${green_png}"   "${green_png}"~ignore

Answer 3

If you're just browsing files without adding anything, exiting out of Dropbox and refreshing the Dropbox folder page removes the green check marks. When you need to sync some files, just open Dropbox again.

This also works with Mega cloud storage. Just exit out of Mega to stop syncing and refresh the Mega folder page.