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Cryanht's avatar
Cryanht
New member | Level 1
10 months ago
Solved

How can I stream videos on my PC with the Dropbox desktop app?

Hi, I have downloaded the Dropbox app on windows and every time I click on a video through file explorer then it starts downloading instead of playing with native player, can someone help me on this?...
sync
Videos
windows
  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    10 months ago
    Cryanht wrote:

    I have downloaded the Dropbox app on windows and every time I click on a video through file explorer then it starts downloading instead of playing with native player ...

    That's not how Dropbox works on a computer. The Dropbox app is for syncing files. Meaning, to make sure that the files in the local Dropbox folder are in sync with the copy in the cloud. It doesn't stream anything and isn't responsible for opening files.

    You can mark files as Online-only so they don't take up any local disk space, but if you need to interact with the file it will be downloaded back to the computer. This is true even if you're just viewing the files. The only way to interact with a file solely in the cloud, is to view the file through the Dropbox website.

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
10 months ago
Cryanht wrote:

I have downloaded the Dropbox app on windows and every time I click on a video through file explorer then it starts downloading instead of playing with native player ...

That's not how Dropbox works on a computer. The Dropbox app is for syncing files. Meaning, to make sure that the files in the local Dropbox folder are in sync with the copy in the cloud. It doesn't stream anything and isn't responsible for opening files.

You can mark files as Online-only so they don't take up any local disk space, but if you need to interact with the file it will be downloaded back to the computer. This is true even if you're just viewing the files. The only way to interact with a file solely in the cloud, is to view the file through the Dropbox website.

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