Free Dropbox client Maestral will eventually stop working

Maestral, the lightweight and free open source Dropbox client for Mac, has been retired, according to project lead Sam Schott.

In its seven years of existence, Maestral has proven to be a popular client with users of platforms and file systems no longer directly supported by Dropbox. It was also praised for its simplicity, small app bundle size, and low memory usage compared to the official Dropbox app.

Removing the overhead from Dropbox clients, Maestral simply runs in the background and syncs a local folder with Dropbox using the company’s APIs. It also allows you to set up unlimited Dropbox accounts, supports selective syncing, and works on unlimited devices, avoiding Dropbox’s limitations.

Schott, writing on the project’s GitHub page:

Since 07/28/2026, this project has been archived. It’s been a fun challenge developing a sync client, but unfortunately I find too little time to invest in Maestral these days. I also gave up using Dropbox myself.

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