No background camera uploads from latest iphones?

[Arkadiy K.]

I own a iphone XS, my wife owns an iphone X. We both noticed that Dropbox doesn't sync photos taken by the camera in the background. 

To get the photos to upload to the cloud, we have to open Dropbox and go to the "Photos" tab. Only then the upload starts.

Whe both have the "Background uploading" option enabled in the settings and Dropbox has access to Geolocation Service (which probably is required for the background uploading for some reason).

My wife is stuck with 1800+ photos that take forever to upload this way.

I don't have this problem on my Android phone. Dropbox uploads photos immediately right after they're taken.

Dear Dropbox, please respond.

[Jay]

Hi there, the background uploading does require location services enabled to keep it running. 

However, the app will automatically resume unfinished uploads when it detects a change to a location that you have previously uploaded to with Camera Upload (Wi-Fi only).

If uploading using cellular data is enabled, the app will resume when a significant location change is detected.

Additionally, if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled (this is an Apple setting that stores your photos and videos in iCloud), and have its "Optimize iPhone Storage" setting enabled, this will save your full-resolution files in iCloud and store "optimized" versions on your phone.

Since the full-resolution images are stored in iCloud, the camera uploads feature needs to connect to the iCloud servers to upload each full-resolution image to Dropbox. This can be a slow process that depends on the strength of the connection to the iCloud servers.

Hopefully this should clarify matters!

[Arkadiy K.]

No, it does not clarify matters. I don't have icloud enabled any my photos don't upload in background when I'm at home. And obviously, I don't want to upload through cellular data.

[Jay]

Have you already tried uninstalling the app, rebooting the device and then installing it again?

[Arkadiy K.]

As I mentioned above, this happens on my wife's iphone X (we tried reinstalling the app) and my new absolutely fresh iphone XS (reinstall not needed obviously). 

[Jay]

Sorry for the delay in responding, @Arkadiy K., are you still experiencing this issue?

Have you tried reinstalling the app to see if this helps? Even if the device is new, it can help.

[Rich]

Are you taking these photos at home, not opening the Dropbox app, and expecting them to upload in the background automatically, while still at home and without having changed locations? If so, then it's not going to happen.

In order for photos to upload in the background on an iPhone, a change in location needs to be detected. That's the trigger for background uploading. Without that, the photos won't upload until you open the Dropbox app. You need to either open the app or trigger a change in location.

The fact that it works on Android isn't relevant here as this is a limitation imposed by Apple and how backgrounding an app works. Dropbox uses a change in a location as a trigger to "wake up" the app in the background and process any uploads that are waiting. Without that wake-up call, background uploading won't happen.

[Arkadiy K.]

I'm familiar with this limitation. However, I take photos during the day and expect them to upload automatically when I'm using wifi in a hotel/cafe or at home. This doesn't happen - I have to open the dropbox app manually each time to get the backlog queue moving. This is happening on my new iphone XS.

Me and my wife we travelling for 6 weeks through the US on a roadtrip. We switched around 10 hotels, and been on countless wifi networks. Her queue of 2300+ photos moved down to 1800 only when I turned off the screen timer and let Dropbox stay turned on overnight.

Funny though, one photo in the US takes ages to upload (30+ seconds). We tried in San Francisco, Reno, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. We even thought of camping inside Dropbox's office lobby just for fun to see how fast stuff would upload. Because in Moscow and Thailand uploads are extremely fast (5-10 seconds).

[bencarew1]

I have the same problem. My background app refresh setting is never switched on but location services is and still the app doesn't register a change in location and start the photo queue moving (unless i open the app).

I have just switched on background app refresh to wi-fi only. We'll see if that makes a difference.

[bmattyd]

Same issue here. I just upgraded from iPhone 6s to iPhone XS. Background uploading does not work after the phone screen turns off, regardless of if the App is open or not.