Having difficulties with desktop seafile - exclamation point not connecting stable

SeaDrive
,
1

Setup

  • Client: SeaDrive 3.0.23 (macOS Drive Client, current release)
  • OS: macOS 26.5.1 “Tahoe”, build 25F80 (Darwin 25.5.0)
  • Server: Seafile self-hosted, version , reached over a Tailscale hostname (https://.ts.net)
  • Accounts: 3 accounts, all on the same server
  • Second Mac: same server, same accounts, SeaDrive works fine there — so this is local to one machine

Symptoms

  1. Exclamation mark on the SeaDrive menu-bar icon.
  2. “failed to connect to background process, please try again later”.
  3. When I try to move files in they stall and never are uploaded

What I’ve tried

  1. Restarted the app — healthy for ~24 seconds (accounts load, rpc server started, sync actually works), then the extension exits and it’s broken again.
  2. Ruled out the network. The server answers HTTP 200 in ~40 ms from this Mac over Tailscale, and the daemon successfully cloned and synced a library before dying. The failing socket is the local pipe between the GUI and the extension, not a connection to the server.
  3. Full uninstall (app to Trash, removed the group container, app scripts, preferences, and the container’s contents) plus a reboot.
  4. Clean reinstall of 3.0.23 with zero accounts — the stale domains were still there; SeaDrive adopted them rather than removing them.
  5. Added one account back — it synced once, then the extension died 23 seconds later and writes stopped uploading again.
2

It sounds like the macOS File Provider framework is retaining stale registration data even after your manual cleanup, which is preventing the background process from staying active.

Please try the following steps to force a reset of the client settings and wake the extension:

  1. Force-clear Preferences: Even if you deleted the plist file, macOS often caches these settings in memory. Run the following command in the Terminal while SeaDrive is closed:
    defaults delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.seafile.Seafile\ Drive\ Client.plist

  2. Manually Trigger the Extension: Sometimes the background process doesn’t start correctly until it is explicitly requested by the OS. Open Finder and click on the SeaDrive entry in the sidebar. This action forces macOS to wake up the File Provider extension.

  3. Check for Extension Logs: Since the app dies after ~23 seconds, the specific reason might be captured in the logs. Please check ~/Library/Logs/SeaDrive.log and also look for SeaDrive-related crash reports in the macOS Console.app (under “Crash Reports”).

If the “stale domains” persist after the defaults delete command, it suggests the File Provider registration is stuck at the OS level. You might need to use pluginkit -e ignore -i com.seafile.seadrive.fileprovider (or similar commands) to manually unregister them, but try the steps above first.