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?

[Fiona · Accepted solution]

Hi @_chris! Thank you for joing Dropbox Community. 

Even though symlinks could work up to one point, they were never officially supported as they would cause issues various syncing issues and high CPU usage.

Some Community discussions about this: 

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Sync-never-end-for-a-symbolic-link/m-p/324962

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Syncing-when-using-symbolic-links/td-p/312221

A workaround to have this working is posted by my colleague Celeste here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Moving-folders-files-to-meet-new-symlink-rules/td-p/36...

Feel free to let me know all your questions and even subscribe to the thread above to be notified for responses there. 

Hope this helps! 

P.S. You can subscribe to any Community thread to see what other people have posted  from the ellipsis button (...) on the top right side of the thread. 

[Nbpw]

Hi. I'm exactly in the same situation : used for years the symlinks to sync my mac OS system folders /Desktop, /Documents, /Music, /Download without any problem... basicly to keep my two macbooks air from office and home synced together and access everything in real time through my iPad Pro when I'm in an outside meeting or away from home/office.

Everything stopped working two months ago. I can not even move my system folders in the Dropbox folders (error message "you do not have authorization") so I'm stuck. The solution quoted by Fiona is not really one as I'd have to stop saving my documents on my desktop, big change of habits and if I want a quick access, necessity to create a new symlink for every new document... I'm a journalist, I do a lot of research and download many pdf a day + create lots of new document... I cannot stop having them directly accessible on my computer desktop and cannont start moving them etc...

Anyway, if a solution emerges, please let me know, I've been exchanging through email with the support services but it takes forever to get answers and have this thing resolved... even if at that point I'm a bit hopeless, my understanding beeing that Dropbox is now irrelevant for my needs (it's just a shame it happened one week after paying for an increased price one year subscription of more of 100$)...

[Fiona]

 I get where you are coming from with this feedback @Nbpw.

As you understand there are not much to offer to get this to work as it did before and the only solution would for the files to be in Dropbox, so trying to move them was a great step. Sorry to hear this is not working. Most probably these system folders cannot add the Dropbox directory to their folder paths, getting the error probably means that this would affect their operation. 

Kindly clarify which system folders you are trying to move in Dropbox, so I can investigate more on the error you mentioned.

You could move these files in simple folders to then have them in Dropbox, but I am not sure this is an actual solution for your work set up. 

[Fiona]

Found your ticket and prioritized it @Nbpw. 

Now it's in the right hands and prioritized. 

[Nbpw]

Hi Fiona. Thanks for this fast answer ! Both my Macbooks Air are on Mojave 10.14.6. But as you stated even if I was able to move my system folders in the dropbox folder that would require me to change a lot of my work setups and habits to get everything right again. I'm really surprised that Dropbox still not allows to sync files where they are on the computer instead of forcing users to move them in the Dropbox folders. I have been reviewing other syncinc services those past weeks as I could not use Dropbox (and need a constant saving of my most crucial folders - /Desktop and /Documents - on the cloud as it is kind of a "up to date work insurance" for me as freelancer... if my computer crashes I do not loose my work and can pick up almost right where I left off on my other one without too much time or data loss) and most of them all seem to offer this basic option : just select the folders you want synced wherever they are... Howcome such an advanced system as yours does not allow it ? Thanks again. N

[Fiona]

Yeah.. I know what you mean. 

Currently, Dropbox can "see" only what's in Dropbox. Hope in the future we could sync a whole computer and all types of systems they include.  Your feedback is always helpful and want to thank you for taking the time to post this comment in our discussion. 

If there is anything else I could help with, please don't hesitate to tag my name in any Community thread. I will be glad to assist!  

Cheers!

[Nbpw]

Thanks for this fast and honest answer ! At least I'll stop going crazy wondering if I'm missing something somewhere and waiting for email answers 🤪 !  Hope this will also help others like @_chris and me. Last question is regarding the possibility of getting my suscription money back. As I said, I renewed it a week before everything stopped working and I obviously wouldn't have if I had realised that. Not a lot of hope here neither but maybe you could help ! Many thanks again.

[_chris]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Nbpw, and for the further replies from Dropbox. Yeah, in light of this I’ve just changed my workflow slightly and copied all the items out of my /music, /documents etc folders in the home directory on my Mac into new folders that live inside the Dropbox folder. It seemed that was the most straightforward way to keep everything synced.

[Fiona]

Thank you for your kind response @Nbpw. 

I see you have a ticket still open with our team. I have no view of your account or transactions via Community to check if you are eligible for a refund, but the agent handling your case can look into that. Hope we can give you your money back. 

@_chris, thanks for posting your solution!

Have a nice day.