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Forum Discussion

KrisHughes's avatar
KrisHughes
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago

Is there a way to disable downloads on ALL my files and make it the default?

It would be rare or never that I want to let someone download a file I send a link to. Is there a way to disable downloads as the default? (yes, I have a "professional" account)

7 Replies

  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    2 years ago

    Hey KrisHughes, thanks for posting your question today!

     

    I'm afraid there's no way to disable downloads on all files by default; you'd need to manually change this for each link separately.

     

    We really appreciate your feedback, though, and I'll make sure to pass it along to our team.

     

    Let me know if you have any questions.

  • KrisHughes's avatar
    KrisHughes
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago

    You replied to a question, not feedback. I appreciate the clarity of your answer.

    Here is the feedback: Dropbox is a large tech company. Presumably you employ a few people capable of writing code. You expect your customers to nearly double their subscription for the privilege of disabling downloads when sharing files - a process which currently takes about three clicks to achieve, and requires that users who have many things to do remember to complete that process every time they share a link. Dropbox has set a default. Surely it isn't unreasonable to expect that they would give their customers a toggle somewhere which overrides it on their own account. I didn't realise, when you said "Do more with Dropbox" that you meant "perform more steps because you can't set a simple default".
    Now you have some feedback.

  • JasonSilverDBX's avatar
    JasonSilverDBX
    Icon for Dropbox Product Manager rankDropbox Product Manager
    2 years ago

    Hi KrisHughes

     

    Thank you for sharing your feedback here.  I am a Product Manager for Sharing here at Dropbox and speaking personally, I think this is a reasonable expectation for our product.  We do offer the ability in account settings to set your sharing defaults for audience and view vs edit permission, but we do not currently offer the ability to set the download setting by default.  That last part is what you're asking for and goes a step beyond setting the default to View.

    I'm going to take this feedback to our teams.  I can't promise the results, but I do think this is a great callout that we'll look into.  Thank you!

  • KrisHughes's avatar
    KrisHughes
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago

    Thank you. I'm new to the new plan that allows control over this, but it seems to involve so many clicks to get it done every time I share, a real time waster. Ideally, a dialogue box should open when I right click "copy dropbox link" in Windows File Explorer, but the ability to set a default would be almost as good.

  • Mark's avatar
    Mark
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    2 years ago

    KrisHughes wrote:

    Thank you. I'm new to the new plan that allows control over this, but it seems to involve so many clicks to get it done every time I share, a real time waster. Ideally, a dialogue box should open when I right click "copy dropbox link" in Windows File Explorer, but the ability to set a default would be almost as good.


    The whole Dropbox sharing model is confusing and poorly designed KrisHughes  😞 

     

    Trying to delete links of previously created files is painful as is the confusion between all of the different permutations on sharing (folder/file/read only/edit etc.). 

  • KrisHughes's avatar
    KrisHughes
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago

    It definitely needs some more intuitive menus and simpler processes.

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