Change journals are read from the volume directly and there's no evidence in the ProcMon logs (posted elsewhere here) that Dropbox uses them. > I'm fairly cert

Change journals are read from the volume directly and there's no evidence in the ProcMon logs (posted elsewhere here) that Dropbox uses them. > I'm fairly certain that checking file properties (as would be done to check whether or not a filter applies) would be registered as opening the file. Bzzt, nope. Wrong again. You should really try and not comment on things that you are not well-versed at. This part in particular - "as would be done to check whether or not a filter applies" - makes no sense. Dropbox has the file path readily available from the notification itself [1], and that's the only thing they need to look at to determine if the file is in their managed directory or not. [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364391%28v=vs.85%29.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... Point being that the app does not need to open files when processing file system notifications, which is what you stated in the top comment.