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

[_chris]

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, and /Documents get automatically synced to dropbox, and it's worked really well. But I got a message from dropbox today that the way it handles symlinks is changing, and that now if you have a symlink to a folder in your dropbox the contents of that folder won't sync if the original files aren't also in your dropbox folder.

What's the best workaround for this? Mac OS doesn't seem to like you moving the subfolders of your home directory so I don't know if I can just swap the folders around so the orginals are in dropbox and the symlinks go in /Users/myname/Folder. Has anyone managed to do this and make it work? The other thing I thought to do was to put copies of the folders in dropbox and use smart sync to make them online only to avoid filling my hard drive with duplicates, but doing this means things wouldn't go to dropbox automatically whenever they changed. Has anyone been working this way and got a good solution?

[Mark K.19]

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.

[louzip]

I use symlink to backup my files in windows. There are some folders I would not like to backup, where symlink would help a lot. I just use the link to backup the folders I needed.

This is a bad move from dropbox without consulting the public opinion. And I should plan and  recommend my colleagues moving away from dropbox.

I have MS one drive account, and it could support symlink. Now, moving away.......

[Mark K.19]

The change took effect. My symlinks no longer work. The symlink itself appears as a file now. The folder that was symlinked is now renamed as follows:

example old name: "Architectural Files"

new name: "Architectural Files (Symlink Backup Copy)"

This renamed folder is set to not sync. So at least it didn't fill my hard drive. So now my files are out of sync.

This is going to be a huge waste of time for me as I re-organize my files and storage devices or move to a new provider. I wonder what important feature Dropbox will remove next.

I am a very annoyed Dropbox Business Advanced customer 😞

[nullptr]

I wanted to follow up on where I landed with the symlink change along with a solution using rclone. It might be helpful to someone else.

[yes_please]

so sad...