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Forum Discussion
Drag and drop URLs of files to other MacOS apps
Hi,
we want do use dropbox as an alternative for our current DAM and so we must be able to drag and drop image files from dropbox into Affinity Designer, Publisher or Photo.
This way the files stay connected with their web-source, if a certain key (ctrl) is hit in Affinity while dragging the images from Safari. It works great with websites and their images (i.e. resulting in a path like https://static.agravity.io/af6827b1d-080b-4f76-9b1f-5ee91cf12514/p3a350b8a-076f-4b1b-bdc2-9f2035c54c74/1130x810.webp), but not from Dropbox. Here the result comes as an error like i.e.
This is strange. How can we drag and drop assets with actual URLs from Dropbox to other MacOS apps to keep them linked?
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Hi @StevoVienna, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Are you essentially trying to have the raw image or file linked as a preview from the Dropbox site, into another program?
Have you tried using shared links, and forcing the file to render by changing the dl=0 to raw=1?
This will help me to assist further!
Hi Jay,
shared links wont do the trick, as the file has to be dragged onto the other apps canvas. There is no URL-import-field in most MacOS desktop publishing apps. Depending on the actual resolution visible in Dropbox the placed file would then be production ready or just a preview.
So the drag and drop-way to place the file is the only way applicable to Affinity and other DTP-apps.
any other idea?
- Walter
Have you tried downloading the file and dragging it from your computer directly @StevoVienna?
When you do it from the website, it seems that you're copying the preview of the file (as it would show on our website from a logged-in state) instead of the actual file.
