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Can we have the Command Line Interface for Windows/Mac?

Can we have the Command Line Interface for Windows/Mac?

Halil Ş.
New member | Level 1

Even though, there is a command line interface on linux (which has start, stop and, soon, pause options), there seems to be no equivalent feature on windows nor on mac. This feature should be easily transferable. I see no technical reasons why this cannot be possible (especially to mac), is there any?

Latest Update
Jay
Dropbox Staff

This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.

Status changed to: Closed
43 Comments
critStock
Helpful | Level 5

Thank you, SwanCobb, for this useful information. But that utility does not seem to support  pause and resume commands. 

Ed
Dropbox Staff

Hi all

So you're absolutely right - these commands do exist for Linux but not for Mac/Windows.

I double checked with our engineers and there are no plans to launch this anytime soon 😞

If I hear any further updates I'll update this thread.

Thanks!

Status changed to: Not for right now
ColombianJoker
Helpful | Level 6

A command line to manage some functions like start, stop, pause, unpause, query Dropbox on Mac really will be useful.

James C.87
Helpful | Level 5

I am astonished that there is no programmatic interface to Dropbox (except on Linux) to quiesce sync operations during backup operations. This seems to be a fundamental requirement for all operating systems using Dropbox. Lack of such an interface tends to increase frequency of conflicted files. Manual on/off is not an economic solution.

For example, on macOS the simple shell command tmutil disable before a backup and tmutil enable following prevents access conflicts and allows the full system resources to be applied to the backup. One could easily conceive of dropboxutil stopsync and dropboxutil startsync as useful tools.

This issue has been mentioned at various times for many years, but has never been expressed as a general need or as useful for accurate backup results. Maybe it is time for Dropbox Software Management to look again at this issue.

    Jim, a Dropbox user for years.

 

 

Dawesi
New member | Level 2

dbxcli is v3 as of Jan 30, 2019... a lot more features and fixes since 2017

https://github.com/dropbox/dbxcli/releases/tag/v3.0.0

z1ad
New member | Level 2

An alternative to the task kill suggestion above is to use something like Sysinternals PsSuspend to suspend/resume the process which is much faster and safer than killing and restarting. See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pssuspend

Pause dropbox:

pssuspend dropbox.exe

Resume dropbox:

pssuspend -r dropbox.exe
hvisage
Explorer | Level 3

@z1adthat is a Windows only soluiton, I'm still looking for a clean MacOSX one that doesn't stop/kill/restart/resume the process, but have a programatic interface to DropBox to do the pause/resume

kbuffington
Explorer | Level 4

@zlad I tried the pssuspend and while it does suspend dropbox, it doesn't resync. I need this to resync folders that are symlinked in dropbox (it only notices changes on startup or unpause) so this isn't a solution for me like an actual command line pause/unpause command would be.

schrodinger
New member | Level 2

Hey Dropbox, I frequently run into file access conflicts due to dropbox as a developer. Running builds often breaks without pausing dropbox. Git occasionally gets corrupted due to conflicts with dropbox.

People have been asking for this for years. Bump this up from the bottom of your priority list, please!

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86 votes received Status: Closed