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

cloudres's avatar
cloudres
Experienced | Level 12
18 days ago

Best way to sync the Downloads and Desktop folders across my Macs

Hi everyone, I need to keep my Downloads and Desktop folders synchronised (in addition to the Dropbox folder) across all my Macs. What’s the best way to do this using Dropbox, if it’s possible?

Thanks.

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hey there cloudres - thanks for posting on our Community!

    Are you familiar with the Dropbox Backup feature by any chance? This would help keep those folders backed up from all of your devices, but they'd be named after your linked devices.

    If you'd like to sync them, you'd need to copy or move them into your Dropbox folder.

    I hope this helps!

    • cloudres's avatar
      cloudres
      Experienced | Level 12

      I’ve never tried that feature before, but I’m not sure it’s ideal in my case after reading your comment. Perhaps I’ve just misunderstood? I need something that’s a sort of middle ground between a backup folder and a synchronised folder.

      • Hannah's avatar
        Hannah
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Hey cloudres, backing up those folders with the Backup feature would add them to your Dropbox account, without needing to manually copy them into your Dropbox folder.

        However with backup, the folders would be available on your other devices only through the backups page on dropbox.com, not locally.

        If you want the folders to be synced and available in the Dropbox folder on all connected computers, you'd need to manually sync them, by moving or copying them like Walter mentioned.

        I hope this helps.

About Storage Space

Looking for help with managing the storage space in your Dropbox account? Talk to the Dropbox Community and get advice from members.

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!