How to Remove or Uninstall Dropbox from macOS

If you want to delete Dropbox from your Mac, you may get the following error:“The item Dropbox can’t be moved to Trash because some of its plugins are in use.”

For many users, this message shows up even when they are following all instructions on the Dropbox website. It continuously pops up whenever they are trying to drag the application to the trash. This problem is not exclusive for some specific MacOS or OS X versions only. It can happen in any OS version and any Mac computer. Here you can find how to fix it.

Method #1

1. First, unlink your Mac from your Dropbox.
   • Click on the Dropbox icon located in your menu bar.
   • Go to Preferences > Account, and choose Unlink Dropbox.
2. Next, quit Dropbox
   • Click on the Dropbox icon located in your menu bar.
   • Click on the Gear icon from the Dropbox menu.
   • Select Quit Dropbox.
3. Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.
4. Now, quit any Dropbox process that is running.
5. Then move it to Trash. (Drag-and-drop Dropbox into Trash from your Application folder.)

This will NOT delete your Dropbox folder and the content in it from your computer. If you want to delete the Dropbox folder, drag it to Trash as well.

To uninstall the Dropbox contextual menu, do the following.

1. Open Finder and select Go to folder from the Go menu. (or press Shift + Command + G)
2. Copy and paste this line into the dialog box that just appeared (without the quotes). ”/Library”
   
3. Drag–and–drop the DropboxHelperTools folder to Trash to delete it.

To remove your Dropbox application settings, do the following

1. Launch Finder and select Go to folder, from the Go menu. (or press Shift + Command + G)
2. Copy and paste this line into the dialog box that just appeared (without the quotes). “~/.dropbox”
   
3. Select all the files in the folder, and drag–and–drop them into Trash.

If this method doesn’t help you, try the following.

Method #2

1. Control–click on the Dropbox application.
2. Choose Show Package Contents from the menu.
3. Open the selected folder.
4. Now, find the Plugins folder and delete it.
5. Launch Finder.
6. Navigate to the directory containing the Dropbox app.
7. Select the Dropbox app, press Command + Delete, and choose Move to Trash.

These are the methods that helped many users in deleting Dropbox from their Macs. But, which one worked for you? Make sure you drop us a line in the comment section below.