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Forum Discussion
Make offline files visible in the android filesystem
I think you should make files stored offline on Android available in the file system.
As it is now, the dropbox files marked as 'available offline' are hidden from the rest of the operating system. This gives a number of problems:
1: When opening a file in an app, that app may put the file path in its 'most recently used documents'-list. However, since the path it gets from the Dropbox-app is not long-lived, the 'most recently used documents'-list becomes unusable, since the links on it become dead rather quickly.
2: It makes using browsing apps, like photo viewers or podcast players, on your offline files impossible.
3: Some apps expect content to be found on the file system. For example, the samsung app used to download content onto a samsung smart watch, expects to find files in the file system. It cannot be used to download files from dropbox onto the smart watch.
4: Sometimes a smart phone is used a bit like a computer. Like uploading files to an FTP-server and the like. A FTP-client typically expects to find files on the file system, and allows them to be selected and uploaded. This does not work with Dropbox.
A possible work-around is to export the contents from the dropbox offline folder onto the phones regular file system. This is unsatisfactory because:
1) It feels cumbersome. The number of clicks to send a podcast episode to a smart watch, or to download a .pdf from dropbox and upload to an FTP-server, becomes a few too many.
2) For files which can be edited (like password manager saves, various profiles, text documents etc), the user needs to remember to copy the file back to Dropbox, which is very error prone.
Dropbox obviously already has technology to synk a file system folder with dropbox. Could not this functionality be offered on smart phones also?
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As a Dropbox user on Android, I want the files that I marked "Make available offline" to be accessible when my internet is down.
Really, this feels like a bug, so here's it is in bug report format.
Setup: (With internet)
1. Open the Dropbox app on my Android phone.
2. Tap the three vertical dots next to a file.
3. Toggle the "Make available offline" so that the switch is to the right, and is colored blue.
4. Wait for the green circle with a white down arrow to appear next to the three vertical dots for the file.
Steps to reproduce:
1. Connect my phone to my WiFi.
2. Unplug the cable modem or otherwise disconnect my WiFi router from the internet while leaving the WiFi router operational.
3. Open the Dropbox app on my Android phone.
4. Navigate to the offline files area in the app: Home -> Hamburger (upper left) -> Offline. Alternatively, navigate to the location of the file in the Files area in the app.
5. Tap the file to try to open it.
Expected result:
The file opens just like it would while online.
Actual result:
A modal appears with a flying saucer icon in the middle at the top, the filename is centered below it, some sort of center-out progress bar(?) below that, and a centered cancel button at the bottom. This does not go away unless the cancel button is pressed. The file is never opened.
Screenshot:
Hello folks!
Million $$ question been asked million times.
Running Android (Samsung G 21FE) V11 (3.1 UI). Trying to locate local (downloaded/offline) files and folders. Did the google search and of course based on all suggestions there are no files or folders from dropbox to be found on my phone.
Same question with other words: is there more efficient way to export group of files or entire folder or group of folders to my phone?
Thanks!
- Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey dmpus, thanks for your post!
Files you make available offline should be stored in the Dropbox cache, but you can still export files to your device through the Dropbox mobile app.
You'll find the option to do that, if you tap the vertical ellipsis button next to each file.
And you can also long press to select multiple files, then tap the vertical ellipsis at the top right corner and select 'save to device'.
Let me know if you have any questions! I searched in both phone internal folder structure as well as sdcard and could not find dropbox anywhere. Note, my phone is not rooted (if that matters).
Thanks again for your help!!
- Rich
Super User II
dmpus wrote:
I searched in both phone internal folder structure as well as sdcard and could not find dropbox anywhere.
If you're trying to access the files through your phone's file manager/directly in the operating system, that's no longer possible. A change made about a year ago now has the files stored in a location that is not user accessible.
Thanks Rich,
Would "Developer mode" or "show hidden files" make dropbox stored folder visible?
Any alternative to export folders to phone instead of files only?
The loss of the key feature I paid for dropbox for on my new tablet is infuriating. Cloud storage is not a shiny special feature, there are many competing services. Dropbox used to distinguish itself by having "available offline" mean what it says. Now, they're simply not "available" at all.
Trying to replace all other file interfaces is insane. You're doing it badly. The strength was letting other applications handle things appropriately for their specialized needs.
I have apps like moonreader+ that try to integrate into Dropbox by using your inter-app communications, and even *they* can't access files consistently.
How is this still an issue? How difficult could it possibly be to implement this? What in the hell is the point on my using Dropbox to sync files IF I CAN'T EVEN ACCESS THEM AS I WOULD ANY NORMAL FILE?!?!?!??!
It's really frustrating that this is being treated (and ignored) as just a feature request. The functionality being requested is the functionality that made Dropbox a desirable, successful product. Just sync my files across multiple things and let me use them in the normal way on each thing.
Is that why my go***bleep** smarthome stopped working, cause all my tablets have stopped having access to the shared resources that dropbox synced.
Look. I like dropbox, a lot, but some of these decisions are incredibly hard to understand. What am I supposed to do, Dropbox, export each file in my music collection? Manually export every jpg that is used as a background? Export an entire website structure by hand, file by file?
Why are you making yourself so difficult to like? Make a dropbox folder in the root storage or whatever and sync there.
This is ridiculous. Either sync to all supported platforms or admit you can't - I can see and export files from a web browser, I don't need an app.
Also, hell, Dropbox, it worked until I opened the app it it forced me to update so it works, you just killed the feature cause newer users upgraded to a newer android. So an app that works on an OS that works just gets nuked cause you can't be bothered to keep the feature.
