Prevent full syncing to iphone

[Tom B.68]

How can I restrict what's going to end up on my iPhone when I install Dropbox on it? I've seen nothing reassuring me that DB will be polite and not just do a dump of everything to my phone, but I want to know that before I get the app.

I've used DB for years, but only on my PCs and Macs. I'm glad it syncs everything to them. Now I have reason to add it to my iPhone but I only want a tiny subset of my DB stuff to go on my phone. I have about 13GB of DB stuff and that would pretty much take all my remaining phone storage. I've searched for the answer to this but haven't found it. So here I am. I don't want to install DB on my phone until I know it's not just going to start blasting whatever it can get away with onto it. Ideally I'd make a new DB folder first and have that be the only folder that ever gets synced to the phone. This seems like an obvious thing to want so I assume I've just don't know the secret. Is there a way to control this without interfering with syncs among my "real" computers and laptop?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Lusil]

Hi there @Tom B.68, thanks for reaching out to us!

The mobile app works differently than the desktop app, in a way that it doesn't store your contents to your local storage. 

However, if you do offline files, they will take up space on your mobile. 

Having said that, would you still like the ability to choose what to have visible on your mobile device?

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

[Tom B.68]

Thanks a lot Lusil. I suspected as much but couldn't find a clear unambiguous statement to that effect. That gets rid of my main concern about filling up my phone.

What I'd really like to have is a single folder in my DB that will get synced to my iPhone whenever I put something in it or remove it from that folder on my PC. I'm making math related videos on my PC but I need them on my phone to post them to Instagram. I've tried putting the video(s) on iDrive but it takes literally days to appear on my phone, and these are not long videos at all - my test one is only 5 seconds but it took three days after putting it on iDrive from my PC before it appeared on my phone. I've found a web page that says this should work if I use Dropbox instead and the video is actually on the phone (that's my read anyway). It's really the only thing at this point I need DB on my phone for. My workflow would be smoothest if there's a single syncing folder, at least at this point. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance.

Tom Bates

[Lusil]

Yes, you are right. When you add something through the desktop app and it gets synced to the web, it should also be visible through the mobile app. 

If you have any trouble along the way though, don't hesitate to give us another shout. 

In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead of you!