Why does Dropbox consume CPU cycles even when paused?

Today I noticed that Dropbox consumes nearly as much as half of CPU time consumed by kernel_task on OS X 10.8.3, which is a pretty decent amount of CPU usage. So I paused it and see what would happen.

Surprisingly, even after I paused syncing, Dropbox takes roughly the same amount of CPU (and nothing is being changed).

So, Dropbox keeps on indexing even if I instruct it to "pause"? Then the "pause" only applies to network usage? This seems pretty dumb?

4ae1e1

Posted 2013-05-15T20:56:28.210

Reputation: 1 306

Some versions of Dropbox have had issues where they use too much CPU. Hopefully you can upgrade to a version that fixed this issue now https://www.dropbox.com/release_notes

– Matthew Lock – 2014-11-21T07:04:00.150

@MatthewLock Thank you, but hopefully you could look at the posting date before commenting... It would be really weird if I haven't upgraded in 1.5 years. – 4ae1e1 – 2014-11-21T07:05:16.437

I just had the same issue today, so I added it for others in case they stumble here like me. – Matthew Lock – 2014-11-21T07:05:53.993

@MatthewLock Okay. – 4ae1e1 – 2014-11-21T07:07:11.727

What's your actual question? You are right about the pause, according to Dropbox: "Dropbox allows you to pause and resume syncing through the Dropbox menu in your system tray or menu bar." But what are you trying to solve exactly? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-05-15T21:00:22.933

@techie007 I'm just trying to get confirmation about my understanding of this behavior. – 4ae1e1 – 2013-05-15T21:53:18.970

Answers

The pause feature is only meant to stop syncing with the server. This is useful if you were about to shutdown your computer or disconnect from the internet and would prevent any file corruption. This would also be useful if you were playing an online game as with an online game more often than not your network connection is your bottleneck rather than CPU usage.

The CPU usage will remain constant or only show a slight drop when syncing is paused because the background process is still indexing and maintaining the widget on the menu bar.

jjno91

Posted 2013-05-15T20:56:28.210

Reputation: 313

1If Dropbox corrupts your file because you disconnect your network, that's a bug... – Steven Lu – 2017-07-16T22:47:23.027

They need a "Stop slowing down my machine" feature. Intuitively that is Pause, but apparently right now the only option is Exit, after which you have to wait through a slow startup all over again. – Chris Moschini – 2019-08-19T16:10:03.467

Indexing is independent of syncing files from your Dropbox account. Dropbox relies on knowledge of file contents obtained through indexing in order to efficiently sync your data, so that it can upload only the parts of files that have changed, rather than whole files when it is not needed. If Dropbox didn't index the files, it would not be able to do this.

bwDraco

Posted 2013-05-15T20:56:28.210

Reputation: 41 701

Yeah of course Dropbox relies on indexing, but it can resume indexing when you resume "syncing"... If you lose your connection Dropbox will pause even you don't ask it to do so. That is to say, the "pause" feature as it is now is not very useful generally, since it does nothing other than stop sending packages to servers. I guess it is only useful when your connection is slow, but even if your connection is slow you don't necessarily need to pause; you can put a throttle on the upload/download speed. – 4ae1e1 – 2013-05-15T21:57:28.253