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
jacovg91
2 years agoExplorer | Level 4
1 byte files when uploading many photos through Dropbox iOS app
Hi all,
After each vacation, I always upload my photos from my iPhone using the Dropbox app. This works fine, whenever I select like 300 photo's. Any more than this, Dropbox will continue uploading the photos as 1 byte files. Obviously, this is not the photo. I would just like to select all my photos (usually like 3000-4000 at once) and let the app do its thing, instead of doing it in batches. This has happened for many years now. I've finally decided to create a topic to see if this is normal behaviour or if it can be resolved. Maybe good to mention, i keep my phone active at all times and do not leave the dropbox app while uploading.
Hi Everybody,
We have implemented a fix in the latest version of Dropbox for iOS, V346.4.2. Please update your Dropbox app and let us know if this error still occurs.
Regards,
Ben
- WalterDropbox Staff
Hi there jacovg91, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.
Could you please clarify if you're manually uploading your files via the (+) button within the Dropbox mobile app or if you're using the automatic camera uploads feature?
Can you maybe send us a couple of screenshots of a sample file showing this behavior and how the upload is logged in your events page?
Any additional information is more than welcome!
- jacovg91Explorer | Level 4
Hi @walter, thanks for the response! I've reproduced the issue and attached all screenshots.
I'm using the + button, manually selecting all photos (just keeping my finger on the screen and dragging it down to select hundreds). Usually, about 300-400 upload completely fine, but then the rest will start uploading (really fast aswell) as 1byte files. This happens both on my wives iPhone 12 Pro and own iPhone 13 Pro, by the way. Our apps are fully up to date, and this has happened for many years already. We've always had issues uploading alot of photos at once using the iOS app.
Hereby some screenshots and what I did to reproduce the issue. My app is in Dutch, but you'll get the idea.
Step 1: Remove the automatic lockscreen on my iPhone, so the screen won't go dark to keep the app alive.
Step 2: Selected 1147 photos, press upload in the iOS app. No issues here, it just takes some time preparing the upload. There are also videos in this selection.
Screenshot:
Step 3: The uploading of the photos has now started. No issues here. I put the phone down.
Screenshot:
Step 4: Suddenly, without doing anything, after successfully uploading ~800/1147 photos, the upload will continue but will upload the photos as blank 135 byte files. In the past, it has many times also already happened after it has uploaded ~400 photos. It seems to be a little random.
Screenshot from app:
Screenshot from desktop:
from what I can see looking at the file names, it seems to be some kind of retry mechanism because it goes up to "(16)". What is also strange is that the faulty files have a file name containing the date and time of the upload, instead of the date and time the photo was taken.
The event page just tells me that the file has been uploaded, nothing else. When I try to open the file, it shows me this:
I've double checked if there is anything "weird" happening during or after the photos taken at 15/12/2022 15:12 (the date&time after which it starts failing) and I can't seem to find any issues. They are normal photo's.
Hope this displays the issue that I'm having clearly. Hope to hear from you 🙂
- HannahDropbox Staff
Hey jacovg91, thanks for this helpful info and the screenshots!
If you try to upload your photos using our camera uploads feature instead, are you getting the same behavior?
About Create, upload, and share
Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.
Need more support
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!