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How to stop / start dropbox in the Apple Terminal?

dropbox stop works when using Oracle Linux, but not within Mac OS 10.6.8.

2 Answers 2

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Contrary to Linux, the main Dropbox functionality is in Dropbox.app itself. You wouldn't want to kill the background daemon (dbfseventsd), which does not have a command-line interface. So, it's not the same as in Linux.

The safest way to quit Dropbox is to run the following:

osascript -e 'tell application "Dropbox" to quit'

You can start it again by calling:

open -a "Dropbox"
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  • This doesn't kill a hanging DropBox icon in the menu bar for me. It gives 30:34: execution error: Dropbox got an error: AppleEvent timed out. (-1712) Apr 12, 2014 at 6:52
  • @Jeroen You might have to use a kill command then, with the process ID of Dropbox. Or perhaps restart the machine.
    – slhck
    Apr 12, 2014 at 7:20
  • killall works; see my other answer that has an alias for restarting Dropbox (first trying the friendly way, then the brutal way) Apr 12, 2014 at 7:26
  • @slhck I would like to simply start the dropbox daemon when I log into a Mac via ssh, without using the GUI. Could I run dbfseventsd? In case, where do I find it?
    – Valerio
    Jul 19, 2017 at 19:36
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    @ slhck i tried open via ssh: i get LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810. As expected it is not possible as deamon and GUI are together.
    – Valerio
    Jul 20, 2017 at 11:33
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In addition to the answer by slhck:

When the DropBox menu icon hangs and shows the rainbow wheel/spinning wheel then the below command will kill Dropbox:

killall Dropbox

Then you can start it with open -a "DropBox" like https://superuser.com/users/48078/slhck mentioned.

This is the alias I have defined for restarting Dropbox:

alias restartDropBox="osascript -e 'tell application \"Dropbox\" to quit';killall Dropbox;open -a \"Dropbox\""

Note the:

NB: The 300% enlarged spinning wheel is from WikiMedia.
enter image description here

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    Getting LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed for the application /Applications/Dropbox.app with error -600. when restarting - but the killall Dropbox command worked perfectly
    – 1owk3y
    Nov 2, 2017 at 13:58

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