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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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- My solution that solved it was the Dropsync app from the Google Play store. You can set up folder pairs (your music or video call or whatever) to sync where you want them to be. I set up the folder holding my music on Dropbox linked to a music folder on the SD card in my tablet. It indexed all the subfolders in the DB, then created matching subfolders on the SD card, then filled them all with the mp3 files. You can choose whether it checks for changes and syncs them, how often, if it can use your mobile data, if you don't want to sync unless the android is plugged in, and if it syncs files both directions or just one. The free version is limited, but the pro key is reasonable and permanent and lets you set up a large number of folders to sync. This is the best way I've found to make your offline files visible and accessible to any app you want to use locally.
So great that I first pay a monthly fee for dropbox, and then I need an additional 3rd party app to access my files outside the dropbox app.. makes no sense. Considering changing to another cloud service after my current payment period ends.
