You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Disable desktop notifications for app's folder
I'm using Dropbox Sync to write down small files to sync things in my iOS app. Because records and datastores are too limited in my case, I can't use Datastore. Unfortunately, these internal files are generating a lot of notifications on my desktop. It annoys the user. The solution is to disable sync of this folder on desktop computers, but it requires an additional step for the user (after having annoyed it). All of this is degrading user experience.
By nature, what happens inside an app folder is less likely to be of interest for an human user. It would be great if we were able to set our app folders as "notifications free" if relevant. One can also imagine per subfolder filtering. For now, my apps are mobile only, but if I want to make a desktop version and use Dropbox to sync stuffs, disabling app's folder sync will be impossible and users would have to live with dozens of garbage notifications. It would be so awful that it would prevent me to use Dropbox at all to sync with a desktop version (even if user would like to use Dropbox).
Hi Steve M., I must admit this is one of the most frustrating threads I ever participated in. Please read the very original request from Thomas and if possible also the comments I posted throughout the last calendar year: This is all about the APPS folder - a folder you, DropBox, creates, on behalf of your final users, not them personally. What sense does it make to notify users about changes in the folder they never created? Isn't this absolutely obvious case? Independent on any API version, independent on API client requests or parameters sent... Simply NEVER notify about changes in the APPS folder and its subfolders! I guess this feature must be implemented in your Dropbox software - in your Windows and Mac clients as it is those clients who display those annoying notifications. There is hardly any other work-around. I am very sorry for using bold font and one or two exclamation marks but for the last 427 days of this ticket lifetime I do not sense any sincere interest from any 'Dropboxer' to address this issue. Maybe my view is too simplified but it is about one if statement in the related client code...
Thomas, the reason for the global mute request is for the sake of the user. While thoughtful devs like you will now code your app that way, most others haven't. So it'd be nice to be able to just mute that whole folder (and others selectively in the future) so that we don't have to wait for devs to include such functionality in their apps.
That request is still important to users of Dropbox, but it just got mixed in with your original question because no one else had a topic for it at the time in the user forum.
- Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Thanks for the feature request! I'm sending it along now.
Absolutely! I use ClipaVu intensively across a couple of computers ( it's great to have my clipboard synchronised, so that I can clip from one computer and later paste onto another. However, whenever I [Ctrl]+c I receive a flurry of useless and annoying notifications about files with random names being saved in Dropbox. These notifications are merely data, not information. Muting them would be wonderful!
Hello @Mads P., @Érico C. expressed that exactly, there is however one thing I'd like to emphasise: When he talks about 'specific folder' it might sound the user can select which folders he wants to get notified about. That is a thinkable scenario too but the very first step should be that by default all notification are disabled for EVERYTHING that is under the APPS folder. APPS folder is not anything the user has actively created it is crated for him to serve for any of the applications he installed. For that reason the user does not expect any notifications (very probably he does not even know there is any apps subfolder at all). And for that reason user gets naturally annoyed by these unexpected notifications.
To say it shortly: The name of this thread is just perfect: "Disable desktop notifications for app's folder".
Best regards, Jan
Hi @Joe C., thank you very much for putting you energy into this and also a clear separation of the 2 possible solutions. I am not on V2 yet and unfortunately have no capacity to move to it within the foreseeable short time. I totally agree with your last sentence saying that it is not the most efficient solution to wait for all the developers to discover this problem, update to v2 and add the mute parameter. Plus consider the scenario of 3rd party libraries released as NuGet packages. If their owners do not do the proper update then poor the final dev users who took the dependency... That is the other reason I plead for the more robust solution - the one that makes all the APPS folder notifications silent. I explained number of time why I think it totally makes sense and you seem to agree to it. Gregory claims it is not an easy change, I have a hard time believing so to be quite honest as I have used notification in number of products I have worked on. Is there any chance I can open this topic on a non-API related forum, so I get the chance to observe the progress? I would be very thankful if you point me to such a place. Thank you very much in advance, Jan
- Greg-DB
Jan, there's a Product Feedback section of the forum for leaving feedback for Dropbox in general, as opposed to for the API in particular.
Hello, the same here. Isn't this an extremely obvious case? Should not these desktop notifications be switched off BY DEFAULT? It seems this feature request is sitting there for 1/2 a year - any chance it will be possible to switch off the notifications on all the clients OS for the given DropBox app? It should be the given app (if installed on the given OS) that handles the updates but not the user - it would generate only his/her frustrations... Greg or anybody from DB, can you please give a status update on this? Thank you very much in advance, Jan
Hi Gregory, may I ask what does "no update" mean? I guess DropBox has some internal tracking system of bugs and feature requests... Is this feature request originally introduced by Thomas anywhere in that system? Is there ANY chance it will get implemented? I have been living with these notifications for the last 2 months... As a feedback for me as a developer it is a useful side-effect... as a user, nothing can annoy me more. I am afraid many people will feel it the same way. Thanks and have a nice day, Jan
I'm surprised this still isn't a thing. It should have been added long ago already.
In my case, I have a shared folder with several people who keep adding stuff all the time to a certain folder, and it's really annoying. I'd like to disable notifications for that particular folder. The only current way to do this is disable it from syncing, but then it also deletes all the folder's contents from my computer, which makes no sense to me.
Let me se if I get this right, it is not possible to turn of the notifications? Im being spamed with popups from dropbox every 10th second. Is my only option to mute my computer?
About Dropbox API Support & Feedback
Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.
