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Forum Discussion
How can I keep my symlinks in the Dropbox folder on my Mac OS?
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...
Hi _chris! Thank you for joing Dropbox Community.
Even though symlinks could work up to one point, they were never officially supported as they would cause issues various syncing issues and high CPU usage.
Some Community discussions about this:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Sync-never-end-for-a-symbolic-link/m-p/324962
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Syncing-when-using-symbolic-links/td-p/312221
A workaround to have this working is posted by my colleague Celeste here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Moving-folders-files-to-meet-new-symlink-rules/td-p/364624
Feel free to let me know all your questions and even subscribe to the thread above to be notified for responses there.
Hope this helps! :slight_smile:
P.S. You can subscribe to any Community thread to see what other people have posted from the ellipsis button (...) on the top right side of the thread.
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
Dropbox Staff
Hey Racer. Welcome to the Community.
I am sorry that my response is not an actual solution to your request. :slight_frown: 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!
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.
