Camera Upload Not Syncing New Photos on Iphone

[Ashley K.3]

I have Dropbox installed on my computer, and when I plug in my phone I get the message, "No new images or videos were found on Ashley's iPhone" when in fact there are lots of new images and videos for Dropbox to add to my Camera Upload folder. All my settings are correct on my computer to take the files from my phone and add them to Dropbox, I have enough room in my Dropbox account, I can't seem to figure out why it just hasn't downloaded any new images since March.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks, Ashley

[Hannah]

Hey @Arjb, thanks for joining this discussion.

Can you try these steps, to see if they help?

[Arjb]

Hi Hannah. I had seen that list before. Yes I have made sure background refresh is on for dropbox. This phone currently has no cellular plan and no SIM card so the other items are N/A. I am using it solely on wifi at the moment.

Also please note, photos upload fine so long as the dropbox app is first tapped and brought to the foreground. They just won't upload in the background. The behavior I expect to see is that shortly after taking pictures they upload automatically, with the iphone now displaying the home screen or displaying/running some other foreground app besides dropbox itself. 

thanks,

Arjb

[Megan]

Hi @Arjb, it might sound trivial, but could you try toggling the "Background uploading" feature in the app off, and then on? 

[Arjb]

Hi Megan,

I assume you mean toggle the "Background App Refresh" setting for Dropbox in the iOS Settings. I had tried toggling this before with no luck. I just did it again, still no change.

For your information: I just installed Google Photos on this same iPhone and it correctly backs up photos in the background with no user intervention needed. (I prefer certain other features of Dropbox over Google Photos, which is why I am still hoping to resolve this issue.)

Thanks,

Arjb.

[Arjb]

@Megan @Hannah  : Further to my last post, I also configured Dropbox on my iPad to upload photos automatically, to use just as another test case. I observed exactly the same problem. Photos are not uploaded at all until I bring Dropbox into the foreground, then they immediately upload to the cloud. This is using iPadOS 16.6, and latest Dropbox version for iOS. This seems to confirm that this feature does not work on iOS, and I'm surprised this is not more widely known.  The iOS App Store lists the following as the first feature in the list:

"Automatically upload videos and photos from your camera roll to cloud storage - all in the background - for easy video sharing and photo sharing."

This statement would seem to be untrue based on my tests. 

If Google Photos can do it then surely so can Dropbox!

Arjb.

[Arjb]

@Megan @Hannah : Further once again to my last two posts, I have now been able to test this feature on an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy) and can confirm it works exactly as advertised. A new photo is almost immediately uploaded to the Dropbox cloud, in the background, while I'm still in the Camera app. No other action is needed to trigger this.

There does seem to be a difference in implementation between iOS and Android based on my limited testing. I wish Dropbox could address this issue on iOS, or else inform users what else we need to do to make this work as advertised.

thanks,

Arjb.

[langshipley]

@Arjb Weirdly, background app refresh and backups/Camera uploads has not worked for me for ages. I always have to go into the app to initiate a back up. It's annoying as heck. And as of recently, every time there's an app update, it kills the Camera Uploads feature. Not useful when I'm trying to back stuff up that I need off my phone. It's been sitting at "backing up" for the last 3 hours on the same one file now, as far as I can tell.

FYI @Megan @Hannah you guys need to do something about every app update breaking the Camera Uploads. And no, constantly having to delete the app, reinstall the app, clearing cache is not working. Clearly, you guys need to do better testing on this front before rolling out the updates. 

[Walter]

Hi all - thanks for flagging this with us and providing your feedback too. 

After investigating, we are limited on working on a solution at this time, as it likely involves third party operations, we'll update you if we have more insights on this. 

[gascantx]

I have to say that this problem is hugely annoying!   I use Google Photos, Flickr, and Dropbox all for photos uploads on my Android phone and my wife's iOS phone.   Google Photos, Flickr, and Dropbox all work perfectly on Android.  I have never had an issue there.  Never.   On my wife's iOS phone, Google Photos, and Flickr work perfectly - every single time.  New photos are uploaded with only a few minutes lag.  As for Dropbox on iOS - it has never worked correctly as far as automated uploads.   I have completed every single suggested action to try to resolve it - nothing fixes the issue.  There is obviously a product defect here.

So it is quite obvious that Dropbox has an issue with iOS.   Other apps on iOS do this just fine so Dropbox really needs to fix this or they are about about to lose a couple of customers.   I have watched people complain about this for years and Dropbox has yet to fix it.  

I have some automation build around the dropbox uploads but I now plan on reworking that as I just can't rely on Dropbox to fix this problem.