How to get rid of Dropbox’s green check-mark icons in macOS Finder

Today in the morning I realized that the Dropbox folder on my MacBook Pro had a green check mark icon attached to it. When I opened that folder, all the files that are synced with Dropbox had the same green check mark icon attached to it.

I remember that some years ago I found a way to remove them, but could not remember how I did it. I know that these sync icons show the status of that file or folder, but for me they are just annoying and distracting. That’s why I googled to find out, how to get rid of them. I found several posts in the Dropbox Community, but all without any solution.

A CNET article describes a quick tweak to rid myself of the green check marks. With “Show Package Contents” of the Dropbox programme and navigating to a certain folder I found the overlay file for the unwanted icon. I renamed it and relaunched the finder. But without success. Also deleting the file and restarting the Finder did not change anything.

I looked at other results of the Google search. In another thread in the Dropbox Community one user had the solution.

I had to open System Preferences and choose Extensions. There I had to uncheck the Finder Extensions for Dropbox. Finally I could see no green check-marks anymore.

I wrote this blog post as a reference to myself, but maybe others find it helpful too.