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How can I keep my symlinks in the Dropbox folder on my Mac OS?
For years I have used symlinks in my dropbox to the subfolders of my home directory in Mac OS (e.g. /Users/myname/Music, Documents, Pictures etc.) so the the files I'm working in in /Music, /Pictures...
Hi _chris! Thank you for joing Dropbox Community.
Even though symlinks could work up to one point, they were never officially supported as they would cause issues various syncing issues and high CPU usage.
Some Community discussions about this:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Sync-never-end-for-a-symbolic-link/m-p/324962
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Syncing-when-using-symbolic-links/td-p/312221
A workaround to have this working is posted by my colleague Celeste here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Moving-folders-files-to-meet-new-symlink-rules/td-p/364624
Feel free to let me know all your questions and even subscribe to the thread above to be notified for responses there.
Hope this helps! :slight_smile:
P.S. You can subscribe to any Community thread to see what other people have posted from the ellipsis button (...) on the top right side of the thread.
Thanks for this fast and honest answer ! At least I'll stop going crazy wondering if I'm missing something somewhere and waiting for email answers 🤪 ! Hope this will also help others like @_chris and me. Last question is regarding the possibility of getting my suscription money back. As I said, I renewed it a week before everything stopped working and I obviously wouldn't have if I had realised that. Not a lot of hope here neither but maybe you could help ! Many thanks again.
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThank you for your kind response Nbpw.
I see you have a ticket still open with our team. I have no view of your account or transactions via Community to check if you are eligible for a refund, but the agent handling your case can look into that. :wink:Hope we can give you your money back.
_chris, thanks for posting your solution!
Have a nice day.
This is still working for me today. Just setup a new machine and my symlinks made using "ln -s" are syncing files properly. Good to see it still working for me at least, but I want to know why it works for me and not others? Will this feature be taken away from me too? I've been using symlinks without issue for 10 years on a paid Dropbox account. I never got an email about symlinks being broken by Dropbox.
If this breaks I will have to switch to a more advanced service that allows syncing of files either via symlinks or explicitly choosing folders to sync.
- Fiona
So suprised this still works for you intarray. Lucky you! :hear_no_evil:
I am afraid that not all the updates of the Dropbox desktop application have gone through in your case and this is why it still works.
Please read here how the Dropbox desktop application handles symlinks nowadays.
Let me know if you have any questions.
intarray wrote:and @Tyler N, what Dropbox alternatives have you been looking at? This symlink change also has me moving on to a better solution and I would be keen to hear your recommendations.
I've been a user for a decade now. This mandatory symlink change is assinine, especially under the guise that it is better for us because it causes sync issues or high CPU usage. My atom powered backup server never had a single problem in the last decade - if it causes high CPU usage then I should decide whether I want to enable it or not.
Dropbox should backup my files, period. Not dictate how large an individual disk is or how data is organized on my server. What's next, dropbox only syncs if you're wearing a t-shirt and shoes?
Hi all. After long weeks of wondering, I went for the MEGA option that allaws me to sync my Dektop and Documents (on MacOS) for free. Not enough space for everything (Music etc.) but works fine. My only problem at this point is that it's not an app automatically included in the Word/Excel for Mac on my iPad which I use to work when i'm on the road. but still better than what Dropbox has to offer (for more than a 100$ a year) for my needs.... If you find a better solution, I'm all ears !
