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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!
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Here is a post with an active poll. https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-ideas/Enable-Emoji-in-file-names/idi-p/374319
They have closed the feature as `won't do for now`. I really need this on 2021. I will have to find a different solution to sync my Obsidian notes.
This bug is the reason Dropbox lost my business.
I've followed this bug for almost four years. I've explained this bug to Dropbox multiple times and I'm now convinced that they will never fix it. There's no real excuse. None. I'd recommend every major cloud storage provider over Dropbox. I'd recommend a NAS over Dropbox. Heck, a shoebox filled with old USB flash drives only fails due to a lack of cloud integration.
Verify that *all* of your files are being replicated and if not consider using another service. Data loss bugs should never fail silently
Supporting a non-obvious subset of unicode is not a reasonable product decision.
Financially supporting a company that only supports a subset of unicode in filenames when every other cloud storage company supports full unicode filenames is more unresonable in my opinion.
However you are free to spend your money as you wish
I don't need Unicode support in filenames - it would have been trivial for me to rename the file that brought this to my attention. However, what I do need is for the product not to fail silently. Dropbox is happy to report other types of sync issues so that I can address them. Why not this one?
Are there any plans to provide fuller emoji support in filenames?
I'm thinking of moving my working files from Dropbox because of the lack of emoji support.
Most of the explanations of the issue - including those in this thread - are wrong. The best account I have found to identify emojis that do work is that to avoid all emojis coded U+1F. Nearly (nearly!!!) all of those I have tried with other codes do work - so far I have found two that don't, though I haven't tested quite all of them.
But that excludes most emojis and requires individual testing of each one. I have a list of most of those that work at this point in time. Can I trust that the same list will always work in the future? - obviously not because Dropbox is determinedly non-communicative about the issue and such knowledge as there is has been dug up by users. The fact that these work now may just be a quirk of the current programming.
It's 2024:
Still not supporting emojis???
Am I supposed to edit hundreds of filenames by hand??
Unbelievable.
