How can I keep my symlinks in the Dropbox folder on my Mac OS?

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. 

Is there a way to include the Desktop folder in Dropbox for syncing?  I used to use a symlink, but symlinks are no longer supports by Dropbox.

Hey Racer. Welcome to the Community. 

I am sorry that my response is not an actual solution to your request. :slight_frown: Unfortunately, what you are trying to accomplish, can not be done without symlinks and since symlinks operate differently with the Dropbox desktop app, I don't have much to suggest. 

I am merging your request to this similar discussion I had with other users about this. 

Let me know if you have further questions. 

Thank you! 

I'd like to add my voice to those who are unpleasantly surprised at suddenly being forced to change habits. I've been using symlinks for years to sync, among other things, my Desktop on MacOS X, a setup which I use dozens of times every day. Suddenly, without warning, I receive an email saying that I can no longer do this, and on the same day, the syncing stops working. I'm on a work trip, and I can't stop everything to rearrange my whole file system and adopt a new workflow at the drop of a hat. Better would have been to warn me (by email) several months in advance, so that I can prepare more appropriately.

I'm not asking for help. I understand that there is nothing that can or will be done for me at this point by Dropbox. But for this case, as it was also in the case of the rollout of the Smart Sync function (which worked terrbily for me and which I was therefore not interested in), I want to share my disappointment about the way in which I was automatically opted-in to a big change all at once. Trust is a BIG issue when ALL one's important files are at stake. You can't just go changing big features so fast on people without warning. I've now turned off syncing until I better understand what's going on, so that my stuff doesn't get spontaneously deleted. Finally, my loyalty was also hurt when the price was raised and no reasonable option for less than 1TB (now 5TB!) was offered (I have about 300GB of stuff). So at this point, it's three strikes for me, and as soon as I'm able, I'm going to transition to something else. Maybe this feedback will help Dropbox nevertheless.

Thank you for being a loyal Dropbox user. I'd be happy to look into your case and answer any questions, if you wish. 

I appreciate the time you took to add your voice on this thread. We do need your feedback in our Community! 

Thanks for participating to this discussion Tyler N. 

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intarray wrote:

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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 !

- sigh -

After cooling off a bit and getting home from my trip, I sucked it up and spent the better part of a day carefully restructuring my files for continued use with Dropbox. And I'm happy with the result.

So nullptr, I didn't bring myself to actually look into alternatives again (I've done it several times in the past, without success), so I can't help. Except with this small tidbit: instead of creating a symbolic link inside of Dropbox pointing outward to the actual folder, you can also move the actual folder into Dropbox and then create a symbolic link on the outside pointing in, as suggested here: https://www.howtogeek.com/204595/how-to-move-special-folders-on-os-x-to-cloud-storage/. But as it also says there, this might work just fine for most "special" folders (Documents, Music), but it's still probably not a good idea to move Desktop, so that challenge still remains for me. For now, I'm just going to replace all folders on my desktop with symbolic links and minimize the number of files I keep there at any given point. (And use Time Machine regularly.)

So Fiona, your customer service skills basically won the day here. :) But if you do come across a workaround for backing up MacOS Desktop with Dropbox via symlinks (= question from Racer), please let us know. I see that you merged discussions about this, so please just help me make sure that I hear about the answer if it gets posted.

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Tyler N. wrote:

instead of creating a symbolic link inside of Dropbox pointing outward to the actual folder, you can also move the actual folder into Dropbox and then create a symbolic link on the outside pointing in.

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My symlinked folders are larger than the drive where my dropbox folder lives, so this is not an option.

I will be solving this problem after the holiday rush and will let you know what cloud storage solution I land on, we are running local backups and bringing the backup disks off-site until then. I'll probably be posting an article on Medium as well.

So I received the symlink email today as well. I'm incredibly frustrated by this change, as symlinks are a feature I use every day.

Many Mac users have a small main boot drive (SSD) and larger files on an external drive (HDD). Using a symlink, I have been able to keep some folders from my external drive synced to DropBox without problems for many years. For my other computers I just used Selective Sync to not sync those folders; assuming they also have small SSD drives.

The link in the email goes to a page that says this change happened in mid-2019. Yet my symlinks are still working fine today.

When will this change go into effect?

As a Dropbox Business Advanced subscriber, I have to say that the direction DropBox has been heading in is very disappointing to me. Examples:

- Major feature reduction to timeline based Photo/Video browsing (especially iPad). This was a feature I used daily.

- Major development resources spent on "integration" with workflow tools I don't care about (we use none of them).

- Disabling symlink functionality. This is a feature I use heavily.

- Ongoing price increases while features we use are removed.

Very frustrating. DropBox is the most stable and reliable cloud file syncing service currently available. This is the only reason my company is still a customer. But I feel like you are trying to become a different company and maybe don't really want customers like us anymore.

For now my symlinks still work. I guess I'll reassess after this change actually takes effect.