Ahh… makes sense. And you are indeed correct that Bonjour need only be enabled on one machine acting as the server, not on the client(s).
Just to add to the chorus here, my Dropbox is constantly out of sync lately too…to the point where I’m using DT less. Frustrating.
@BLUEFROG I think we have enough examples to conclude this is no longer an isolated issue. Maybe only a small percent of your users use the Sync option. Maybe a significant percent of those who use Sync check regularly to see it it worked.
But we have too many examples right on the Forum of users confirming major issues with Dropbox Sync to believe it is restricted to some rare use case among those who are trying to use the feature regularly.
Who knows if it is a DT3 issue or a Dropbox issue - but clearly the issue is big enough to dig into and identify the root cause.
I have posted my experience elsewhere, but I will share here. I hope it helps.
I am in the midwestern US, and Dropbox syncing of DT has been a mess for > a year. It would fail at times for no reason irrespective of what network I was on. Updates would not show up quickly (or ever). I would have to delete the cloud syncstore and start over every once in a while . . . it really slowed my full adoption of DT and DTTG, as I held back doing any mission critical work that relied upon cloud sync. And then…
I switched to CloudMe, and it just works. It is so nice to now have access to my DT data on all my devices quickly (I have no financial/business/other relationship of any kind with them). They have a free tier, so you can try before you commit.
I hope it helps. (And BTW, my experience with support from DevonTech has always been great for the 18 years (!!) I have been using DevonThink. I am confident that if they could have fixed it, they would have… I suspect this has to do with some vagary of Dropbox’s function.)
best,
jason
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Thanks for the kind words, the longstanding support, and for sharing your experience. A few years back CloudMe went through some growing pains but it has been a sleeper in our experience for quite some time. 
Sad to see the lack of recognition of this problem. I guess were not getting any help on either this or the annotation-bugs with Apple Pencil in DTTG. Its been close to a year since all this started happening.
I guess I’ll be starting my hunt for alternative solutions to DT. Just really annoying that I paid so much for it…
Sorry you’re dissatisfied but this has been discussed at length here, and again, we cannot reproduce an issue nor do we have any usable data pointing to a potential culprit.
Every avenue we’ve explored so far has lead nowhere useful, let alone conclusive.
If we could fix it, we certainly would but reproducibility and useful data is required. We still have neither.
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I’m one of those with who are sitting with an out of sync DT3 using dropbox.
Just to add to the list of problematic users.
I also switched from Scrivener to DT3, partly because of their dropbox problems which they said they could not replicate for iPadOS, and iOS.
Apparently there is some issues with dropbox api’s.
/A
Please add my name as user experiencing this problem - sporadic sync through dropbox to my work DT database. I had it with DT2 and it has been the reason I have been reluctant to upgrade to DT3. My trial with DT3 results in the same issue, initially after creating a new location sync happens swiftly for a few days and then stops. Otherwise, I have been a longtime DT user since at least 2010, and I quite enjoy it.
I am just now considering trying to sync my DT files via Dropbox. (Have used Dropbox for a very long time; use it constantly to sync my Scrivener and Tinderbox files, inter alia, but have not tried it with DT.) I note both the reported instances of some problems, and the non-reproducibility from the company’s POV.
So I can see how things work on my end, is there a canonical “Here is how to set up your DT files with Dropbox” post that I should check out first? On first inspection I haven’t yet found the basic “Step 1, Step 2, Step 3” post that I am sure exists some where. This would be for DT 3.5.2, and one machine running Mojave and the other Catalina. Thanks for any advice.
Best to look at the Help document. Or the manual which says same. All explained there.
Welcome @jfallows
Note the issue is sporadic and affects a small number of people so I wouldn’t assume it would affect you. Could it? Potentially, but we haven’t been able to reproduce it here on any machine and in different environments.
Thanks. I am getting initial sync-hangs, which I am sure are sporadic / anomalous (as you suggest), but for now I’ll just use the database in question on one machine rather than trying to sync it. Will take the time to try to do a full documentation and debug when I have finished a current project. Thanks for the powerful software; I’m sure I will figure this out at some point. jf
You’re welcome.
Cheers!
Coming back on for this. I have for a while now had both Bonjour and iCloud sync enabled simultaneously, as recommended upthread. It seemed to work until recently, but now, when I am reading a document and marking it up in DTTG (and even though the same document is not open on my Mac), I am repeatedly experiencing incidents of multiple copies of that document being made in the DT database as I work, which (as each one is a snapshot of my markup at the moment it is made) presumably results from the syncing progress. Any advice as to how to stop this happening would be appreciated.
The Dropbox issues remain … severely annoying.
See my reply on the other post. Have you discussed this problem with Dropbox?
Why, Dropbox works well, but not DT3.
We use Dropbox’s API made available to third-party developers. This is not the same mechanism as standard Dropbox syncing.