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Forum Discussion
Help renaming the My Mac (computer name.local) folder
Hi, how do i reduce the characters in the name given to to the backup folder "My Mac (macminis-Mac-mini.local)" because I am unable to open some documents as the app I want to use cannot handle paths...
Having same issue, I wanted to link 3 computers and upgrade the computer names. Unfortunately I now have 3 saved mac's with old long names that don't exist anymore. It would be nice if my mac's could not only share, but also adding a simple user friendly directory name change and associated computer. The renaming issue is a flaw in the backup feature if it does not update when you rename your mac IMHO and I will likely roll back to time machine as a safer option if not fixed by dropbox.
It would have been nice if this link was included in this thread. It would've saved me 45 minutes of searching around why unlinking and confirming my computer name wasn't resolving my folder being labeled "PC (2)"
- Hi ELaren,
So if I understand this correctly, they now even removed this weird workaround to change the computername by unlinking and relinking it? I‘m stuck with Mac(2), too! My other machine has a diffrent name, since it was named before that change…
Really unprofessional for a backup service that costs over 10$ per month 😞 According to Dropbox support, there is currently no way to rename MacOs folder:
"Computer Backup naming convention has been updated. With the new naming convention, the first connected device will be called ‘Mac’ or ‘PC’. All following devices connected will be labelled as 'Mac (2)', 'Mac (3)' (or 'PC', 'PC (2)')
The old naming convention was "My Mac (Device Name)" or “My PC (Device Name)”.
We had changed the naming convention as the previous naming convention was too long. This pushed many users closer to path length limits that some apps on Windows encounter. This new convention reduces the impact of this issue.
This is because the computer back up still recognizes that there was previously a back up enabled. If you set up a 3rd Mac, even with both previous devices unlinked, this would then be assigned Mac (3)."
For me the problem is that I changed of computer, I had previously unlik MacFolder so it was transformed into a normal folder on dropbox and then I renamed it. Then I sync my new Mac and I had as a result a Mac(2) (no code friendly) folder. I even completely deleted the first Mac folder, then unlink current one and re-sync it, but nothing seems to work.
Dropbox support confirmed that it doesn't matter if previous Mac folders are deleted, their system will keep detecting them so I'll never have a Mac folder with a short name again. This is very frustrating and just unacceptable from a service with that kind of pricing. Specially when clients have request the possibility of rename the folder by their own since 2020.
How hard could it be to add just a rename folder feature?
I agree, this is totally unacceptable. And makes accessing any files via terminal a total pain.
