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Badtrampers's avatar
Badtrampers
Explorer | Level 4
5 years ago
Solved

.PNGs not visible in Dropbox photos tab

Hello Dropbox Forum!

Whenever I try uploading a .png to Dropbox it doesn't show up in the photos tab (dropbox.com/photos). At first I thought this was due to Dropbox not finding any date in the file (PNGs do lack exif support). However, after trying to both change the filename to the date (using format yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss) and changing the creation/ modified date before uploading it still won't show up. PNG files appear to be supported as they show up when uploaded via the mobile image sync feature. I have tried uploading it to different directories on my Dropbox (including the camera uploads folder) using both the windows desktop client and the web client.

Kindly, a long time Dropbox user.

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    5 years ago

    Thanks for the update. I've looked into this matter further, and per my colleague previously stated, any camera photos of any size saved in PNG format will not appear on the Photos tab.

     

    Screenshots, however, which are generally saved as PNG and uploaded automatically by the camera upload feature, are included on the Photos tab.

     

    We appreciate the feedback on this matter, and if you wish, you can suggest this change for others to vote on, so the dev team can look into this in future!

14 Replies

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  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hey Badtrampers, I'd be more than happy to help look into this with you. 

     

    I'll just need a bit more info to make sure that we've covered as much ground as possible. For example:

    • Are you able to find other uploaded images, such as .jpeg files, in your Photos tab?
    • How large are the .png photos you're having trouble previewing? 
    • Have you tried another browser or an incognito window? 
    • Could you also try clearing the browser's cache and then going to the Photos tab?

    Let me know what you find, thanks!

    • Badtrampers's avatar
      Badtrampers
      Explorer | Level 4

      Hi Lusil, thank you for your help!
      Yes, other images (and videos) do show up in the photos tab without issue. JPG files without date are shown at the bottom of the photo tab under the "missing dates" tiltle. No PNGs (except for the ones uploaded via dropbox mobile image sync) are shown anywhere though. I tried using a different browser and the incognito mode per your suggestion without luck. I even went as far as trying to create a new basic account to see if there would be any difference. Most of the files are less then 1MB in size, some are over 1MB but not more than 2 (they are mostly different types of screenshots).
      • Lusil's avatar
        Lusil
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Thanks for getting back to me, Badtrampers.

         

        I had a better look into this for you, and I found that the Photos tab excludes .png files and pictures under 15 KB. 

         

        This is because they tend to be used for thumbnails and, since users may have hundreds of thumbnails in their files and folders, this exclusion makes sure that only your photos are in the Photos tab.

         

        That doesn't mean that you cannot have these files on Dropbox though.

         

        You can still upload small photos or .pngs to your Dropbox folders from a device and they will appear on your desktop app and in the correct folders on the website.

         

        I hope this helps to some extent, but let me know if you have any other questions. Cheers!

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