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Question

Box Drive is loading as read only on macOS Tahoe

  • August 25, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 25 views

What it says on the title. I’ve deleted Box, wiped preferences, reinstalled. Nothing fixes the issue. Box web interface shows me as an Editor for the folder. Box Drive happily allows me to create and save files in the folder shared with our team, but I cannot actually open any files on desktop to make direct edits. Opening a PDF, Word doc, or Excel file results in a read-only copy. Finder shows my access as read only - but I can create, edit, and delete files. This is maddening. Box is the file share utility provided by our university, and it is not working. I do not have this read-only error with any other cloud service provider. I did not have this issue with Box even a month ago. Org requires Box Tools to be installed for security verification, I cannot remove this even if I wanted to. Box Drive 2.53.223, macOS Tahoe 26.6.2 (25G83).

    1 reply

    Rona Box
    • Rona Box
    • Community Manager
    • September 1, 2026

    Hi ​@DrNixon, 

    Welcome to Box Community! 

    Let’s start with these preliminary troubleshooting steps to resolve your issue: 

    1. Restart your machine
    2. You mentioned you’ve gone into reinstalling your Box Drive application. In this case, could you manually reset your Box Drive application? 

     

    To manually reset Box Drive on a Mac

    1. Quit Box Drive if it is running.
    2. Download and open the Box Reset Tool zip file.
    3. Open the Box Reset Tool from the Downloads folder.
    4. Click Reset.
      • You should see a prompt stating “Box Drive reset successfully”.

      MacOS_Box Drive_Reset Successful.png

    5. Open Box from your application folder and log back in.

    The Box Reset Tool will write logs of actions performed to your Desktop folder under “Box-ResetTool-logs_(<currentday>)”.

     

    Hope it works! Should the issue persist, next thing you should is contact support and create your support case. 

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