How to speed up Dropbox uploads on iPhone

Hi there, I’m Antonio, a member of the Dropbox Mobile team. I wanted to talk about our upload process on iOS and address its current constraints:

If you are manually uploading files into your Dropbox using the plus (“+”) button, keep in mind that uploads will only run while the app is in the foreground. When the app is backgrounded, Dropbox can only run for a few minutes before the device will stop the process to save battery. To remedy this, we recommend keeping the app open while an upload is in progress.

If you are using the camera uploads feature to automatically upload photos from your Camera Roll to Dropbox, you can turn on “Background Uploading”. This will allow your photos and videos to continue uploading even if you don’t have the app open. Additionally, this feature uses location changes to trigger uploads as you move around throughout the day (this is why we ask you to enable “Location Services” when you enable this feature). Keep in mind that if there isn’t a significant location change after a few minutes, the device will stop the process, and photos or videos will no longer upload in the background.

Syncing can be slower if you have “iCloud Photo Library” enabled on your device, and have enabled “Optimize iPhone Storage” in your iCloud Photo settings. This feature stores high resolution versions of your files to the cloud, and keeps optimized versions of the files on your device. When Dropbox attempts to automatically upload these files, we have to first connect to iCloud’s servers to download the high resolution photo, and then sync that photo to your Dropbox. This can be a slow process that is dependent upon the strength of the server connection to iCloud. Additionally, this process is limited to WiFi-only (even if you have the camera uploads feature enabled over cellular data).

With these constraints in mind, here are some recommendations when uploading your files:

• If you have a desktop with the Dropbox desktop app installed, you can use the desktop camera uploads feature. This automatically transfers any new photos or videos to your Dropbox when you plug your device to your computer (read more about this feature here).
• If you don’t have a desktop, ensure that your Dropbox mobile app has “Background Uploading” enabled for your camera uploads. You can do this by going to the Recents tab, selecting the gear icon, selecting Camera Uploads and toggling the “Background Uploading” switch on.
• When uploading files using the plus (“+”) button, keep the Dropbox app open while the upload is in progress.

We’re always working on improving the background upload experience and greatly appreciate your feedback. We'll keep monitoring this thread and will do our best to reply to any other questions not addressed by this explanation.