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Graham H.2's avatar
Graham H.2
Explorer | Level 3
8 years ago
Solved

Mac app support for linking to a different Dropbox account

On iOS, when linking an app to Dropbox, you have the choice to use a different user account. This lets the authentication be done per-app. On the Mac, I don't see this as an option and it seems like all apps must be authenticated against the same Dropbox account. Is choosing the account to link to supported on the Mac? Thanks!

  • Greg-DB's avatar
    Greg-DB
    8 years ago

    The user can link multiple apps to different accounts. They may need to sign in/out of dropbox.com though, as necessary, since you can only link an app to an account when signed in to that account. Once they do so though, they don't need to re-authorize each time they use the app. Each app will receive an access token for whichever account was used, and those access tokens can be stored and re-used without further manual user intervention.)

     

    (For uses with paired Business and personal accounts, the web portion of this is somewhat streamlined as they can be signed in to both on dropbox.com at the same time.)

  • Greg-DB's avatar
    Greg-DB
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    The user can still choose which account they want. On Mac, the app authorization flow uses the normal /oauth2/authorize desktop web page, so they just need to sign out of the currently signed in account, if any, and then sign in to the desired one. There's a "Sign out" option in the dropdown in the top right of the page.
    • Graham H.2's avatar
      Graham H.2
      Explorer | Level 3

      Thanks Greg. Could you just confirm that the user could link multiple apps, each to different accounts, and it would all work without having to re-authenticate each time? This is supported today by iOS.

      • Greg-DB's avatar
        Greg-DB
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        The user can link multiple apps to different accounts. They may need to sign in/out of dropbox.com though, as necessary, since you can only link an app to an account when signed in to that account. Once they do so though, they don't need to re-authorize each time they use the app. Each app will receive an access token for whichever account was used, and those access tokens can be stored and re-used without further manual user intervention.)

         

        (For uses with paired Business and personal accounts, the web portion of this is somewhat streamlined as they can be signed in to both on dropbox.com at the same time.)