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Dropbox not syncing files with emojis in the filename
Hello,
I am trying to use dropbox to sync an application that has a bunch of image files in a subfolder. The image files are of emojis, and each filename IS the emoji that it represents. For example, "😀.png" contains a custom image of the 😀 emoji that the program uses.
The issue is that Dropbox won't sync any of the files that have emojis in the filenames. They all get the red X when I try to upload through the filesystem, and I get an error when I try to upload through the web.
I could put everything in a zip file, but I need to be able to run the application out of the dropbox folder on my other computer without extracting.
Any ideas on how to get these files to sync?
Thanks!
Hi aronskaya, thanks for messaging the Community!
Some emojis are supported, however, the issue is related to UTF encoding.
The emojis that aren't working (along with many other, newer emoji) use 4 bytes, which our filesystem doesn't support. The emoji that do work on Dropbox.com are those that use less than 4 bytes.Dropbox supports using emoji that fall in the Basic Multilingual Plance in file and folder names on the website (although there are some OSes that might not sync the files to your desktop computer due to not playing nice with local filesystems).
Emoji that fall into the Supplementary Multilingual Plane won't work with the Dropbox underlying filesystem, newer emoji fall into this category and are not expected to sync with Dropbox.
Hope this helps to clarify matters!
29 Replies
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- Rich
Super User II
A red X on your files indicates a sync error, which can happen when a filename contains illegal or incompatible characters. More than likely the emoji characters are simply not compatible and you won't be able to sync them.
While the following help article doesn't list emoji characters, it does provide information on why certain files don't sync.
- Rich is correct, the file character issue will occur on most platforms, ie. if the files were to sync to windows, they would have no idea how to read it. So use something more universal.
Thanks for your replies. The files are on Windows now, it reads them fine. Mac does as well. I can't rename them, they were named by the developer of the application, renaming them will break it.
I guess file this under something that "should" work but "doesn't?"
A bit of misinformation here. Emoji are unicode characters. Unicode support in filenames *is* universal. You can name a file with emoji characters in the same way you can with Japanese or Cyrillic. I actually tested this on OS X, Windows 10 Home and Ubuntu Linux. I created a text file on OS X with an emoji filename and opened it on each platform. It's Dropbox dropping the ball here, not unicode or the OS.
Other people have also tested this: https://davidzych.com/abusing-emoji-in-windows/
Ross_SDropbox Staff
It becomes very complicated but basically everyone is correct.
Emojis will cause a file not to sync. Some emojis are unicode and will sync without issues, others will not. Its all down to which ones fall within ASCII I believeAre you sure you mean ASCII here? Pretty sure the number of emoji that fall within ASCII is zero
OP here. It is indeed Dropbox that is dropping the ball. Files with emoji filenames sync successfully with Google Drive, in fact that is how I solved this issue.
I did not mean ASII, sorry, clearly that's not correct.
Basicly, BMP unicode characters is what I meant.
Apologies.
I hope Dropbox takes a look at the issue. Emoji seems silly, but as more users have access to input systems that include emoji more people will have files that won't sync.
That being said, I do not envy the developer that has to look into this. Unicode is a bear
I've done some testing and these are the emojis I've found to sync successfully.
✅♥️ ⬇️ ☂️ ⬛️ ⏹ ☀️ ☘️ ✈️ ✂️
