Why have new Camera Upload files changed to the format "Photo abc"?

[rgledhill]

At some point over the last few months, Dropbox randomly stopped uploading my photos from my iPhone 13 (iOS17 and now 18).  After lots of poor app behaviour, I eventually managed to re-enable it, having manually been uploading files for quite some time.

As soon as I pointed it back at the right folder, it started uploading... but with the word "Photo" in front of the filename!!

So thanks to this stupidity, I now have hundreds of duplicate photos, called things like "2024-09-18 19.38.54.jpg" and "Photo 18-09-24, 19 38 54.jpg".

So not only has it completely renamed it, it's ruined all possibilities to sort by title.

As a final slap in the face, it's processed the images to half their size and reduced the quality!

So, Dropbox... how do I disable this ridiculous "feature" that some imbecile decided would be good to suddenly implement?

[Jay]

Hi @rgledhill, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

There hasn't been any change to how images are uploaded via the Dropbox mobile app. As far as I'm aware, the format is the same as it has since it was created, YYYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS.jpg. 

Are you certain that this is the Dropbox mobile app uploading the images that way? Is it possible that you have an automation running on the camera uploads folder?

This will help me to assist further!

[rgledhill]

Hi Jay,

Thanks, I really appreciate you coming back to me so quickly as this is pretty much rendering Dropbox unusable for me.

Yes, it's definitely Dropbox messing up the filename. I have literally thousands of photos, all following the same naming convention.  When I manually upload them, the filenames remain correct. However as soon as I set the Camera Uploads folder back to Camera Roll (it had been set to "Videos" somehow), Dropbox immediately set about renaming the photos with this other naming convention and uploading them.  If I look in the Camera Uploads directory within the Dropbox app, I now have a load of files saying "Photo xx-xx-xx, yy yy yy.jpg", modified 39 minutes ago.  This has never happened before and only happened when I switched the upload directory back to Camera Uploads.

I've never set up any automations in Dropbox. I have an extremely simple use case for Dropbox on my phone - back up my photos and videos to Camera Uploads. That's it. And it used to do it ok, then it got worse as it stopped automatically uploading, and now it's wrecked my photos directory!

[rgledhill]

Here's an example screenshot of what I'm now presented with - duplicates at lower size, with sometimes a 1s time difference, and with "Photo" at the start...

[Jay]

Did you apply any filters to your images when you were taking the original photo, or made any other changes at the same time?

Are you using the normal camera app on the phone?

[rgledhill]

Nope, no special filters.

I think I might have found something though. I've tried going through the steps that I did earlier and I've found that if I go to the "Camera Uploads" page on the app, then click Upload, it shows me my "library", separated into Photos and Collections. If I select one or more photos from there and click Add, magically it renames the file before uploading it!

So this problem appears to be in the Upload section of the Camera Uploads page.

[Jay]

When you say it renames the file, is this to the new format you experienced, or the normal one?

Could you attach a screenshot showing the selection you made in the library in the Camera Uploads setting?

[rgledhill]

It's to the new format: 

and here is how the same file looks, when uploaded automatically (rather than the manual upload step above):

So it's definitely the Dropbox photo uploader that's changing the name of the file.

[Jay]

It looks like you're using the manual uploader in the first image, and not the automatic camera upload feature. When using the manual uploader, it retains the original file name.

Could you confirm the original name of the image prior to uploading it, by viewing it in iOS itself?

[rgledhill]

Apologies for the slow reply...

Actually it looks like both systems are renaming it (and note that up until now, I've always used the automatic uploader). If I go into my photo album on my phone, open a photo and tap on the i button, it says IMG_0513...