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Camera Upload Not Syncing New Photos on Iphone
I have Dropbox installed on my computer, and when I plug in my phone I get the message, "No new images or videos were found on Ashley's iPhone" when in fact there are lots of new images and videos for Dropbox to add to my Camera Upload folder. All my settings are correct on my computer to take the files from my phone and add them to Dropbox, I have enough room in my Dropbox account, I can't seem to figure out why it just hasn't downloaded any new images since March.
Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks, Ashley
Hello everyone,
In order to fix Camera Uploads for your devices please make sure you have tried the following:
1) Install the latest Dropbox app on your device.
2) Enable / Reset Camera Uploads on your computer
Mac
- Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar at the top of the screen and then click on the gear in the Notifications panel
- Choose "Preferences".
- Go to the "Import" tab.
- Uncheck and check again "Enable camera uploads for".
Windows
- Click the Dropbox icon in the system tray at the bottom right of your screen and then click on the gear in the Notifications panel.
- Select "Preferences".
- In the window that appears, click on "Change AutoPlay Settings".
- In the AutoPlay settings, scroll down and choose the camera you want to change settings for. It will likely have "Import pictures and video using Dropbox" as the default.
- Click on the drop-down menu and choose "Ask me every time" or choose a different application for importing.
This will reset your Camera Uploads settings for all your devices. When you connect a device, Dropbox will ask you if you want to import pictures from it.
Note:
- Android devices: Select Connect as a Disk Drive from the status bar
- iOS devices: Unlock the device to allow camera uploads to continue
3) Enable / Reset Camera Uploads on your mobile device
iOS
- Open the Dropbox app, go to the “Recents” tab and tap the gear icon
- Under the Settings heading, select Camera Uploads
- You can enable or disable the automatic camera uploads feature, as well as the option to allow the feature to use cellular data or not. Please note that videos will not be automatically uploaded over cellular data.Android
- Open the Dropbox app
- Tap on the menu button
- Tap the gear icon
- Under Camera Upload, select “Turn on Camera Upload"You can also read more about the camera uploads feature on the following page: https://help.dropbox.com/photos-videos/camera-uploads-overview
If you experience issues with the Camera Uploads feature, so that our support team can investigate more on this, please go to www.dropbox.com/support and submit a ticket request.
Thank you!
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Hi Hannah. I had seen that list before. Yes I have made sure background refresh is on for dropbox. This phone currently has no cellular plan and no SIM card so the other items are N/A. I am using it solely on wifi at the moment.
Also please note, photos upload fine so long as the dropbox app is first tapped and brought to the foreground. They just won't upload in the background. The behavior I expect to see is that shortly after taking pictures they upload automatically, with the iphone now displaying the home screen or displaying/running some other foreground app besides dropbox itself.thanks,
Arjb
Hi Megan,
I assume you mean toggle the "Background App Refresh" setting for Dropbox in the iOS Settings. I had tried toggling this before with no luck. I just did it again, still no change.
For your information: I just installed Google Photos on this same iPhone and it correctly backs up photos in the background with no user intervention needed. (I prefer certain other features of Dropbox over Google Photos, which is why I am still hoping to resolve this issue.)
Thanks,
Arjb.
Megan Hannah : Further to my last post, I also configured Dropbox on my iPad to upload photos automatically, to use just as another test case. I observed exactly the same problem. Photos are not uploaded at all until I bring Dropbox into the foreground, then they immediately upload to the cloud. This is using iPadOS 16.6, and latest Dropbox version for iOS. This seems to confirm that this feature does not work on iOS, and I'm surprised this is not more widely known. The iOS App Store lists the following as the first feature in the list:
"Automatically upload videos and photos from your camera roll to cloud storage - all in the background - for easy video sharing and photo sharing."
This statement would seem to be untrue based on my tests.
If Google Photos can do it then surely so can Dropbox!
Arjb.
Megan Hannah : Further once again to my last two posts, I have now been able to test this feature on an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy) and can confirm it works exactly as advertised. A new photo is almost immediately uploaded to the Dropbox cloud, in the background, while I'm still in the Camera app. No other action is needed to trigger this.
There does seem to be a difference in implementation between iOS and Android based on my limited testing. I wish Dropbox could address this issue on iOS, or else inform users what else we need to do to make this work as advertised.
thanks,
Arjb.
Arjb Weirdly, background app refresh and backups/Camera uploads has not worked for me for ages. I always have to go into the app to initiate a back up. It's annoying as heck. And as of recently, every time there's an app update, it kills the Camera Uploads feature. Not useful when I'm trying to back stuff up that I need off my phone. It's been sitting at "backing up" for the last 3 hours on the same one file now, as far as I can tell.
FYI Megan Hannah you guys need to do something about every app update breaking the Camera Uploads. And no, constantly having to delete the app, reinstall the app, clearing cache is not working. Clearly, you guys need to do better testing on this front before rolling out the updates.
- Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi all - thanks for flagging this with us and providing your feedback too.
After investigating, we are limited on working on a solution at this time, as it likely involves third party operations, we'll update you if we have more insights on this.
I have to say that this problem is hugely annoying! I use Google Photos, Flickr, and Dropbox all for photos uploads on my Android phone and my wife's iOS phone. Google Photos, Flickr, and Dropbox all work perfectly on Android. I have never had an issue there. Never. On my wife's iOS phone, Google Photos, and Flickr work perfectly - every single time. New photos are uploaded with only a few minutes lag. As for Dropbox on iOS - it has never worked correctly as far as automated uploads. I have completed every single suggested action to try to resolve it - nothing fixes the issue. There is obviously a product defect here.
So it is quite obvious that Dropbox has an issue with iOS. Other apps on iOS do this just fine so Dropbox really needs to fix this or they are about about to lose a couple of customers. I have watched people complain about this for years and Dropbox has yet to fix it.
I have some automation build around the dropbox uploads but I now plan on reworking that as I just can't rely on Dropbox to fix this problem.
