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Forum Discussion
Desktop access without syncing.
Hello. I see it mentioned a few times previously, but am wondering if there is any active development on a way to access Dropbox files from the desktop without either syncing or using the web app...basically as a file server.
It sounds like this would be a common use case. I need to be able to save/print files from an application to Dropbox (for Business), but don't need the overhead of keeping those files locally and syncing them.
Does anyone know if Dropbox has at least considered this kind of functionality?
Thank you.
This thread is YEARS out of date Andrey - Dropbox themselves have been doing it now for awhile. Its called 'Smart Sync' which you can read about https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/smart-sync
I want to be able to access a specific dropbox folder in the normal way, but I don't want it to be mirrored on my local drive (take up space). Seems kind of the main reason of having dropbox y'know. To free up space on your machine?
I can go to "Selective Sync" and unselect that folder, but now it is hidden and I can't acess it like any other folder.
Seems veeeery silly to me.
Time to investigate other solutions!
I am using recently released CloudMounter for this purpose. It allows to mount Dropbox as a disk to Mac Finder and access online files directly, without local syncing.
Dropbox for business is 5 users min + 1TB each = 5TB. Where do I get this 5TB laptop drive? How does this make sense?
I have exactly the same problem. I work in a small lab and we produce lots of high definition images, that occupy lots of space. We want a common server where we can store all the images and have them available when we want them, but with Dropbox we would need to have them all in all the machines, which is not feasible due to hard drive storage limitations, or use the webservice, which does not allow things like dragging files from Dropbox to the server. I have been looking at many other services, but the ones I would call user friendly all have this same fault. An option would be buying a NAS device, but that would limit the storage flexibility that services like Dropbox offer. I am very surprised that, in the business and enterprise packages, they expect people to still have all the files in their own computers, or use a clunky web service.
Thanks. Though if it's (ostensibly) possible with a 3rd party tool like WebDrive, seems like the barrier isn't wholly MS and Apple...unless I'm missing something re: the capability with the 3rd party apps.
Ed : while its a big ask as its a new client or new way, I would suggest DB for the future looks at mounting the folder as a drive, as such you can create remote drives much simpler than trying to create a remote folder (since even MS gave up on the idea)
- Mark
Super User II
Dropbox does not release road maps.
However, as has been said it isnt actually possible at present because Microsoft and Apple have not released the API which would allow third parties to do this. They have restricted it to their own software and systems.
Yandex have app, that working this way. So it's no true.
- Mark
This thread is YEARS out of date Andrey - Dropbox themselves have been doing it now for awhile. Its called 'Smart Sync' which you can read about https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/smart-sync
Keep hope alive, Db are rolling out "Infinite" which they are touting as all Db content listing in explorer but still in the cloud, with localize on demand.
OK so the helpful people at CloudMounter said I needed to instal FUSE
"- install FUSE for OS X: https://osxfuse.github.io/
- enable the "Keep extended attributes" option in CloudMounter preferences."I have installed FUSE and now CloudMounter seems to be letting me drag and drop files to from the Desktop to Dropbox just fine :) (I haven't figured out how to do the second part of the instructions about extended attributes but it seems to be working fine regardless).
Hope this is helpful.
- Mark
Got to say but pass.... it could be that WebDrive is only available for Windows and Dropbox have always said that there products are cross-OS compatible so until it would work across Windows/OS x and Linux etc. it wont happen.
