How to enable Public folder (with Drop Box) File Sharing in macOS Sequoia or Tahoe

It’s insane that I have to write this, because it’s such an absurdly unintuitive and complicated process that I’m going to need this for myself, some few months from now, when I have to go through this kafkaesque dance all over again.

1. Don’t turn on File Sharing [yet]. Changes you make while it’s enabled don’t typically work.
2. Settings > Users & Groups > ⓘ “next to” (far away from) Guest User.
   1. Turn on “Allow guest users to connect to shared folders”.
3. Settings > General > Sharing > ⓘ “next to” File Sharing.
   1. Add the desire user(s) Public folder to the “Shared Folders” list.
   2. DO NOT add any subfolders (such as “Drop Box”), as that will completely break file sharing (Finder on the client Macs will crash if you try to access ancestor or descendant folders).
   3. Right-click on the newly added folder and choose “Advanced Options…”.
      1. Turn on “Allow guest users”.
      2. DO NOT turn on “Only allow SMB encrypted connections”. Doing that will prevent clients from using the folder.
      3. Click “OK”.
   4. With the newly added folder selected, make sure “Everyone” is in the “Users” list with “Read Only” access.
   5. DO NOT set “Everyone” to “Read & Write”. That will prevent the Drop Box subfolder from working correctly (and give everyone write access to your Public folder, which is typically not recommended).
   6. Turn on (via the Toggle) “File Sharing: Off” at the top of the dialog.
   7. Click “Done”.

Usually this will make things work the way they were supposed to from the beginning, but sometimes you have to restart the server and/or client Macs in order to get things working correctly (especially if you had File Sharing enabled at any point during this configuration process, or had otherwise connected from the client to the server before all these settings were correctly configured).