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Free Dropbox Client Maestral Will Eventually Stop Working

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Maestral, the free lightweight open-source Dropbox client for Mac, has been retired, according to the project's maintainer, Sam Schott.

maestral
Over its seven-year life, Maestral has proven to be a popular client for users on platforms and file systems that are no longer directly supported by Dropbox. It has also been lauded for its simplicity, small app bundle size, and low memory usage compared to the official Dropbox app.

By cutting out Dropbox's client bloat, Maestral just runs silently in the background and syncs a local folder to Dropbox using the company's APIs. It also allows for configuring an unlimited number of Dropbox accounts, supports selective sync, and works on an unlimited number of devices – avoiding Dropbox's caps.

Schott, writing on the project's GitHub page:

As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It's been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these days. I've also moved away from using Dropbox myself.

Schott says Maestral will still remain usable in the medium term – i.e., for as long as its certificates are valid – but it will no longer be actively maintained or receive updates. Unless someone else forks the project and takes it over, unfortunately it will eventually stop working.

Tag: Dropbox

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Top Rated Comments

Darmok N Jalad Avatar
Darmok N Jalad
10 weeks ago
I never knew this existed. I barely use dropbox (just to sync a budget folder), and I've always felt that it uses too much memory for a sync app.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Will Co Avatar
Will Co
10 weeks ago
The native app is quite intrusive with a lot of permission requirements, it's bloated and it also constantly pushes you for upgrades. Thankfully I don't need to use DropBox very often, so the browser interface will do for me.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
C
CarAnalogy
10 weeks ago

What are people moving to instead of Dropbox?

Is there a self-hosted solution that matches the ease/turnkey of Dropbox?
Not sure if self hosted will ever be as easy. Most everyone already has a Google/Microsoft/Apple account and so just uses the cloud storage from there, in my experience.

The only people I know who use Dropbox anymore are old people who started using it way back when it first came out and wasn't hot garbage. I was one of those old people, but moved on a long time ago.

To directly answer your question, check out SyncThing.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
M
mdragoni
10 weeks ago
I JUST switched back to Dropbox after my employer decided to retire their GDrive subscription. This app is so much better than the standard Dropbox app for MacOS. Hopefully someone has an alternative.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
M
MacStudioPlease
10 weeks ago

I love Maestral - it's the only thing that keeps me using dropbox at all! Why does every good thing come to an end before its time?!
Because it was developed and maintained by one guy in his own "free" time.

People like FOSS, but aren't willing to invest in it. meanwhile, bills have to be paid....and if something more worthwhile and valuable comes along, what incentive is there to continue that project?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MacGizmo Avatar
MacGizmo
10 weeks ago

The only people I know who use Dropbox anymore are old people who started using it way back when it first came out and wasn't hot garbage.
Given that Dropbox is only 20 years old (this year), I'm not sure how I feel about that comment. 😆

The thing is, I'm not aware of a single solution that requires virtually no setup, works as easily and seamlessly, and can be used on any platform. The list is really, really short for non-technophile users.

I'm not a huge fan of the company, but the product itself is quite good (leaving out all the silly B.S. they keep trying to push on users).

I wish iCloud was as universally accepted as Dropbox. I wish OneDrive didn't, let's be honest, completely suck at so much. I wish I could trust Google. But until one of those three dethrones Dropbox, I'll stick with it.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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