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Policy changes to new files as online-only with File Provider on MacOS?
I am trying to determine the current policy for when files become online-only on a macOS machine that uses File Provider. As I understand it, using File Provider is optional for now, but may become mandatory in the future. I have used Dropbox for over a decade, and currently sync a personal account between 2x Windows devices, 2x Macs, 1 iPhone and 1 Android. My account has 255k files in it, so I'm towards the "power user" side. One Mac is my "main" one, and another is my "personal" one. The personal Mac is on macOS 12.7.6. The main Mac is macOS 15.2. This morning, I switched the personal mac to use File Provider to check its behaviour. In many previous discussions of File Provider, I have seen the official policy "Files added to your Dropbox account from another device or that are shared by another user will default to online-only." However, this does not appear on the main support page: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes , which is listed as updated last Nov 2024. I am curious; is this no longer the official policy, or has this just been rephrased so the behaviour is just implicit? The (possibly defunct) policy sentence appears in these two places, for example: https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101001016/files-and-folders-have-a-cloud-icon/649915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34657560 Note that on my personal mac, now using File Provider, I have right-clicked on the top-level folder at `~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox` and clicked on "Make available offline". There's some indication that this overrides the (possibly defunct) online-only policy, but what is it? As another sub-question, I use selective sync, as one of my top-level folders in Dropbox contains large asset backups, and I sync it to none of my computers. I am really unclear how this conflicts with the "Make available offline" feature in Finder.Exciting times on the Dropbox Community - Live conference
Weâve got something really exciting happening on the Community next week đ€ Weâve been looking forward to this for weeks and weâre delighted to share it with you now. On Tuesday 10th October 2023, youâll be able to join us right here for a live screening of the keynote presentation from Work in Progress: Perspectives. You can watch all the action live from 9:00am EST đ When weâll be hearing from our CEO and Co-founder Drew Houston, followed by some exciting product updates directly from our Leadership Team. If youâd like a little insight into what lies ahead for Dropbox, including the future of work đ©đœâđ» how AI is helping to transform the tools we use đ€ and the opportunities this creates, be sure to make a note in your diary now and keep an eye on the Community for more information.Whatâs new: Dropbox Shop, editing PDFs, and Dropbox Backup
This is a big month for product updates, so keep reading to get all the details about Dropbox Shop, Dropbox Backup and PDF editing. Trust us when we say there are some seriously useful updates here, whether itâs to do with day-to-day file management, security or an online shopfront - exciting times! Secure your digital life with Dropbox Backupâhereâs whatâs new: Backing up your files, as you know, is super important and if you need a simple and secure backup solution to protect the most important parts of your digital life - Dropbox Backup is for you. Whether you have family photos, graduation videos, or tax forms on your computerâyou can keep it all safe and quickly recover with Dropbox Backup. If youâre a member of the Dropbox Community, chances are youâve heard of Computer Backup before, so whatâs the new news? Based on feedback from customers and our Community members, the team have made improvements to Computer Backup - building on our popular backup functionality, weâre now introducing Dropbox Backup. Backup has been upgraded with new features our users have been asking for, including a new restoration flow, settings to manage your backups on your computer, and more. Simplify your backup experience- Manage everything from your desktopâone place to check progress, view history, and prioritize specific files. Be prepared with an automated safety net- Keep backed up files separate from your shared files, so you wonât have to worry about overwriting your emergency backups. Rely on fast recovery if things go wrong- Start recovery with just a few clicks, and your files will be automatically restored from cloud backup. Dropbox Shop is here, and ready for you to try: You might have heard us mention Dropbox Shop before, but now you can join the Public Beta and check it out for yourself! (If you are outside of the U.S. or are part of a team and want to sign up, click here). Dropbox Shop is a new platform that allows creators (like you, maybe) to easily sell contentâfrom e-books and recipes to prints and workout videosâdirectly to customers, so you can spend more doing what you love: creating. With Dropbox Shop you can: Easily create product listings in three clicks: Add content directly from Dropbox or your computer, set a custom image, audio, or video preview, and determine your price, and now, tipping is also enabled. Customize your storefront: Set your seller profile up with a name, picture, and description that lets customers know exactly who you are and what youâre doing! And if you want to update it later, you can simply edit the items and your storefront too. Make the connection: Establish your brand and maintain your relationship with customers through a custom storefront, not a cluttered marketplace of sellers. Add content directly from Dropbox: No need to upload your files all over again. Sell any type of content: With the ability to upload multiple files, of any type, up to 50GB per file for Plus/Pro users and 2GB for Basic users See what works (and what doesnât): View key analytics to help learn whatâs working and what can be better for your business. Share directly with customers: Thereâs no middleman here. You control how you interact with customers - you can share a listing directly with them wherever you interact with them already, whether itâs on email, social media and even newsletters. Enable secure payment processing: Donât worry about managing payments, itâs covered through our partnership with Stripe and Paypal and multiple payment options for customers. Automatically deliver content upon payment: That allows you to save time facilitating sales, and keep on creating. Simplify transactions for you and your customers: Buyers donât need a Dropbox account to make a purchase, they can access their files via email verification and download it within 28 days. Those with a Dropbox account can access everything theyâve purchased when logged in. Work conveniently from your desktop, tablet, or mobile Why not take the first brave step and put your work out there for sale? As we said, you can set up your first content listing in 3 easy clicks, so get started here. Save time and edit PDFs in Dropbox PDFs are incredibly handy files, but sometimes they need to be updated, and now, you can edit them without leaving Dropbox. Well, just exactly how much editing can you do? Within Dropbox you can: Rearrange PDF pages Insert, rotate, and delete PDF pages Fill interactive forms Manage multiple versions: save PDFs as a copy or replace original These features are available to a select few in Beta now, and will roll out to more people in coming weeks. Sounds like a time saver to us! Will you use this feature? Now you can keep your files safe with just a few clicks, sell your digital content, and edit PDFs in no time, which sounds good to us! But wait, there are even more updates you can check out here. Will you be using these new products and features?
Love the new PDF feature
Just to let you know that I love the PDF feature embedded in DropBox. Have used it quite successfully from my Desktop for annotating pdf documents with different colored text. Have used it for a week now. So far, no hitches that I can report. Good work, Development Team at Dropbox.Even more Dropbox Product updates
We always love being able to share new Dropbox updates with you, so here are some improvements you might be interested in, including email updates, Backup news and improved search within Dropbox! Email to Dropbox is ready to use for business now too Email to Dropbox allows you and your trusted contacts to forward email attachments directly to your Dropbox account using a unique email address - that means everything sent to that email address is safe and secure in your account, without having to download or upload your files one by one. Quickly save your email attachmentsâlike images and PDFsâdirectly to your Dropbox account so they are safely stored and easy to find when you need them. Perfect for saving you time, which can help you to keep your work-life balance in check! Reduce the steps needed to save your email attachments in Dropboxâquickly set up your unique and secure email address within seconds and simply forward email attachments directly to your Dropbox account Keep confidential files safe by having trusted clients and partners send sensitive documents directly to Dropbox, where you can securely store them and control access and permissions. Find your content faster by centralizing your email attachments alongside the rest of your content within Dropbox, so you donât have to search across multiple places to find what you need Learn all about how to set up your unique email address here. Dropbox Backup updates Youâve heard us mention (obsess over) Dropbox Backup, and weâre glad to share an update. Now, with the Dropbox Backup plan, you can back up unlimited files on one external drive, in addition to one computer. Just plug in your external drive to back it up to the cloud with Dropbox Backupâitâs that easy. Videos, photos and personal documents that are stored on your external drive will get backed up to Dropbox Backup, where you can access from any device. Keep your digital life safe with Dropbox Backup, so you can quickly and smoothly recover from anything, spills on a laptop or on a hard drive. Check out the Dropbox Backup plan here. Improved Dropbox search capabilities Itâs frustrating when you just canât find what youâre looking for, and thatâs why the team has been working on improving search within Dropbox. These improvements will help you find your content faster, especially when you canât remember the file name. It happens, we know. Fast navigation with Dropbox recommendations. Dropbox will highlight your main collaborators, tags created by you and your team, and recent files and searches. Filter to find content faster. Instead of scrolling to find files in search, filter by date modified alongside folder, file type, people, and image properties to find what you need. Spell check that allows you to quickly identify misspellings and target your search more directly. We are excited about these updates, especially because it can be hard to remember all our file titles, but tell us what you think below!Introducing:: Admin actions on desktop
Overview We are introducing new entry points to the Admin console for admins of Dropbox Business teams. Admins will now be able to access the Admin Console from the Dropbox system tray/menu bar, and from the account switcher of the Dropbox desktop app. We are also introducing a tray notification that gets triggered every time a member requests to join the team. Through this notification, admins can approve the request to join a team directly from the desktop surface, meaning they do not have to go to the Admin Console on web to perform this action. Audience All teamsIntroducing:: Permissions at Upload
Overview On the Dropbox website, when a you attempted to upload a folder to the root folder of your shared team space, you can now set permissions for that folder, specifying who can view the content you are adding. Audience All teams that have team and member folders How do I use it You can find more details about Team Folders, and how to use them here. More ideas If you have more ideas on how we can improve our product then check out our Paper ideation board here, or our Dropbox Business ideation board here. Request improvements, suggest ideas, weâll review them all! Thank you for helping to improve our product.Introducing:: File Locking for Shared Folders
Overview This feature gives file collaborators the ability to lock a file that is contained in a shared folder so it canât be edited by any other collaborator. Files can be locked via dropbox.com or, alternatively, directly on your Desktop App. Locked files will then be made read-only for all other collaborators. Collaborators will be able to comment on and share a link to locked files, but only the user who has locked the file, or team admin will have the ability to unlock it. A locked file will have a lock icon on the thumbnail in Finder/Explorer & on the Dropbox website. Timeline Business teams can opt in to early access through the Admin console, beginning October 16 2019. ( In order for a team to opt in to file locking, they must be migrated to the new sync engine ) General access will begin intially on December 18 and rollout will continue throughout Q1 2020. ScreenshotsIntroducing:: People Pages
Overview People pages is a feature that enables us to put people at the core of the user experience at Dropbox. When a Dropbox Business user opens the desktop app, they will now see a list of suggested people in sidebar pane- These are the people that we believe Business users collaborate with most frequently. You can also add people you collaborate with yourself manually. Clicking anyone from the people list will take them to a rich profile of the person. Users can now spend less time looking for content and stay focused working with people through the following features: Shared Content: Displays which files/folders you and any teammate are working on together, and what theyâve updated within the past 90 days. Teammate highlights: A section that allows users to get a glimpse of your teammates activity highlights. Collaboration: Business users can check their co-workers schedule or connect with them via Slack, email or Zoom from one convenient place, people pages within desktop app - dependant on their co-workerâs calendar sharing/viewing settings. Shared Meetings: Allows you to see meetings you and your co-worker have in common and join them from the Dropbox desktop app. People suggestions: People pages intelligently suggests teammates based on your collaboration history. You can easily add new teammates or pin your key team members to side bar for easy access. Audience All Dropbox Business users on the desktop app How do I use it You can find more details on how to use it here: https://help.dropbox.com/teams-admins/team-member/people-pages More ideas If you have more ideas on how we can improve our product then check out our Paper ideation board here, or our Dropbox Business ideation board here. Request improvements, suggest ideas, weâll review them all! Thank you for helping to improve our product.
