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?

[intarray]

This is still working for me today. Just setup a new machine and my symlinks made using "ln -s" are syncing files properly. Good to see it still working for me at least, but I want to know why it works for me and not others? Will this feature be taken away from me too? I've been using symlinks without issue for 10 years on a paid Dropbox account. I never got an email about symlinks being broken by Dropbox. 

If this breaks I will have to switch to a more advanced service that allows syncing of files either via symlinks or explicitly choosing folders to sync. 

[Fiona]

So suprised this still works for you  @intarray. Lucky you!  

I am afraid that not all the updates of the Dropbox desktop application have gone through in your case and this is why it still works. 

Please read here how the Dropbox desktop application handles symlinks nowadays. 

Let me know if you have any questions. 

[Racer]

Is there a way to include the Desktop folder in Dropbox for syncing?  I used to use a symlink, but symlinks are no longer supports by Dropbox.

[Fiona]

Hey @Racer. Welcome to the Community. 

I am sorry that my response is not an actual solution to your request.  Unfortunately, what you are trying to accomplish, can not be done without symlinks and since symlinks operate differently with the Dropbox desktop app, I don't have much to suggest. 

I am merging your request to this similar discussion I had with other users about this. 

Let me know if you have further questions. 

Thank you! 

[Tyler N.]

I'd like to add my voice to those who are unpleasantly surprised at suddenly being forced to change habits. I've been using symlinks for years to sync, among other things, my Desktop on MacOS X, a setup which I use dozens of times every day. Suddenly, without warning, I receive an email saying that I can no longer do this, and on the same day, the syncing stops working. I'm on a work trip, and I can't stop everything to rearrange my whole file system and adopt a new workflow at the drop of a hat. Better would have been to warn me (by email) several months in advance, so that I can prepare more appropriately.

I'm not asking for help. I understand that there is nothing that can or will be done for me at this point by Dropbox. But for this case, as it was also in the case of the rollout of the Smart Sync function (which worked terrbily for me and which I was therefore not interested in), I want to share my disappointment about the way in which I was automatically opted-in to a big change all at once. Trust is a BIG issue when ALL one's important files are at stake. You can't just go changing big features so fast on people without warning. I've now turned off syncing until I better understand what's going on, so that my stuff doesn't get spontaneously deleted. Finally, my loyalty was also hurt when the price was raised and no reasonable option for less than 1TB (now 5TB!) was offered (I have about 300GB of stuff). So at this point, it's three strikes for me, and as soon as I'm able, I'm going to transition to something else. Maybe this feedback will help Dropbox nevertheless.

[Fiona]

Thank you for being a loyal Dropbox user. I'd be happy to look into your case and answer any questions, if you wish. 

I appreciate the time you took to add your voice on this thread. We do need your feedback in our Community! 

Thanks for participating to this discussion @Tyler N. 

[nullptr]

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@intarray wrote:

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and @Tyler N, what Dropbox alternatives have you been looking at? This symlink change also has me moving on to a better solution and I would be keen to hear your recommendations.

I've been a user for a decade now. This mandatory symlink change is assinine, especially under the guise that it is better for us because it causes sync issues or high CPU usage. My atom powered backup server never had a single problem in the last decade - if it causes high CPU usage then I should decide whether I want to enable it or not.

Dropbox should backup my files, period. Not dictate how large an individual disk is or how data is organized on my server. What's next, dropbox only syncs if you're wearing a t-shirt and shoes?

[Nbpw]

Hi all. After long weeks of wondering, I went for the MEGA option that allaws me to sync my Dektop and Documents (on MacOS) for free. Not enough space for everything (Music etc.) but works fine. My only problem at this point is that it's not an app automatically included in the Word/Excel for Mac on my iPad which I use to work when i'm on the road. but still better than what Dropbox has to offer (for more than a 100$ a year) for my needs.... If you find a better solution, I'm all ears !

[Tyler N.]

- sigh -

After cooling off a bit and getting home from my trip, I sucked it up and spent the better part of a day carefully restructuring my files for continued use with Dropbox. And I'm happy with the result.

So @nullptr, I didn't bring myself to actually look into alternatives again (I've done it several times in the past, without success), so I can't help. Except with this small tidbit: instead of creating a symbolic link inside of Dropbox pointing outward to the actual folder, you can also move the actual folder into Dropbox and then create a symbolic link on the outside pointing in, as suggested here: https://www.howtogeek.com/204595/how-to-move-special-folders-on-os-x-to-cloud-storage/. But as it also says there, this might work just fine for most "special" folders (Documents, Music), but it's still probably not a good idea to move Desktop, so that challenge still remains for me. For now, I'm just going to replace all folders on my desktop with symbolic links and minimize the number of files I keep there at any given point. (And use Time Machine regularly.)

So Fiona, your customer service skills basically won the day here. 🙂 But if you do come across a workaround for backing up MacOS Desktop with Dropbox via symlinks (= question from @Racer), please let us know. I see that you merged discussions about this, so please just help me make sure that I hear about the answer if it gets posted.

[nullptr]

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@Tyler N. wrote:

instead of creating a symbolic link inside of Dropbox pointing outward to the actual folder, you can also move the actual folder into Dropbox and then create a symbolic link on the outside pointing in.

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My symlinked folders are larger than the drive where my dropbox folder lives, so this is not an option.

I will be solving this problem after the holiday rush and will let you know what cloud storage solution I land on, we are running local backups and bringing the backup disks off-site until then. I'll probably be posting an article on Medium as well.