Around 50% of the time when I reboot my computer, I think after an automatic application update, Dropbox quite pretentiously promotes itself to an "always visible" icon which means that it stays permanently on the task bar (just to the left of the clock), instead of remaining in the list of hidden icons that appear only when you click the ^ symbol. Why is this happening and how do I prevent it?
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Check in Dropbox Settings, General: Do you have Dropbox as a Save location for Microsoft Office - that may cause this. Notifications: Check if there are Notifications you may not need. I have Dropbox on my Taskbar and visible.– JohnOct 22, 2020 at 12:36
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Thanks for your suggestion but the option is not enabled. I would like to keep Dropbox notifications enabled, but feel like the visibility issue in the tray area should not be related to these notifications.– aviatorOct 23, 2020 at 3:19
1 Answer
This happens because windows doesn't remember the application or executable name, it remembers a binary checksum of the file. Slack is another application that does this all of the time. Every time I get an update, I need to go toggle slack.
When an application gets updated, this mechanism isn't intelligent enough to know that it is the same product because the binary is different than before.
I am sure that this was by design but there are both pros and cons to it. This means that 5 companies can have "program.exe" and it will still work. I personally don't understand why path\exe_name wasn't good enough but I am sure they had their reasons for this design. Perhaps someone who knows more than I will weigh in.
In the meantime, you will need to keep "flipping the thing".. :|
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Interesting, thanks for your explanation. Windows' behaviour has always been like this, correct? I've been using Dropbox for 8 years and this is the first time I notice it, so I guess I've never started moving it into the hidden list until recently.– aviatorOct 24, 2020 at 15:42
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Yes, I don't care for this design much. If you feel like I answered to question correctly, please feel free to mark it as your answer ;) Oct 24, 2020 at 17:44