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I used ln -s (symbolic link) to link a folder to my Desktop on Mac OS X 10.6 to get Dropbox to sync it. I'm not sure if that's related to the symptom or not, but I did notice that shortly thereafter, my icons occasionally resize themselves to the minimum size even despite my repeatedly resizing them back to normal size. It's driving me bonkers! Any thoughts? Thanks.

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Redirect the ln to a different, non-Dropbox folder for a day and look what happens? – Daniel Beck Oct 5 '10 at 21:47
Have you tried deleting the .DS_Store file on the Dropbox website? – Chealion Oct 6 '10 at 22:55
@Daniel Beck: the resizing doesn't always happen, e.g. it hasn't happened since I posted, so the lack of it happening if I changed the link wouldn't distinguish between solved problem and problem just not happening :( – Philip Oct 7 '10 at 15:10
@Chealion: not sure why I would do that--won't OSX just make a new one? Happy to try it though if/when the problem happens again – Philip Oct 7 '10 at 15:11
Do you have Dropbox notifications (via Growl) activated? What happens when you change the Finder view settings for the desktop, does it show an upload notification? – Daniel Beck Oct 7 '10 at 15:29
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2 Answers

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Are you using a MacBook or MacBook Pro with a Magic Trackpad? Apple added the ability to resize by pinching and reverse pinching the trackpad. I often found myself resizing icons in finder and the desktop by accident after this feature was added so I turned it off in System Preferences > Trackpad.

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Interesting; indeed I am--is there a way to retain pinch-to-zoom option while disabling the icon-resizing aspect of it? E.g. I still want pinch-to-zoom on websites / photos. – Philip Nov 5 '10 at 10:29
not that i know of off the top of my head. for web browsing i just use the Command + "+" or "-" to zoom in and out of the page. – Ryan Sharp Nov 5 '10 at 15:59
I think this might actually be the culprit. I'm going to try disabling pinch-to-zoom for a couple of weeks and see what happens. If they never resize, I'll accept this answer. Thanks! :) – Philip Nov 10 '10 at 19:55
ya it was driving me nuts until i turned it off. – Ryan Sharp Nov 11 '10 at 17:15
Yup, hasn't happened since I turned that off. Thanks! – Philip Dec 13 '10 at 0:56
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up vote 3 down vote

I believe this is due to the fact that OS X stores "view" settings in a ".DS_Store" file. OS X hides these files because they start with a period. I do not believe Dropbox has implemented a way to exclude a particular file during the sync, so the only options you have are to either set the .DS_Store file as read-only, or find an "in-between" setting that you could live with on both machines.

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Interestingly I haven't turned on the only other machine linked to DropBox yet the problem still happened, so I doubt that it's responsible.... – Philip Oct 7 '10 at 15:11
Well that certainly is interesting. In this case, I must admit that I have no clue what is going on. – Nick Oct 7 '10 at 15:18
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