Does offlining on the mobile app actually download the files to my local device?

[AndrewR]

I've seen older versions of this question which are marked as "Solved" but the solutions don't seem to work.

- I have a folder of Music in dropbox

- I switched the "Offline Use" on

- Dropbox showed a percentage of downloaded, it now shows a green checkmark circle

- My "Internal Storage" has increased by the size of the music downloaded, so it's on my phone, but

1) If I go to "Internal Storage", whose size is what increased, Android is not allowing me to see the files

2) There is no "Export" option next to the folder

So my simple question is whether Dropbox will allow me to see the files which it has made available for offline use, as a FOLDER.

If not, then I should switch off the "Offline Use" (hopefully reclaiming the space) and transfer the files to my PC some old fashioned way like USB.

Please advise, thank you!

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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@AndrewR wrote:

So my simple question is whether Dropbox will allow me to see the files which it has made available for offline use, as a FOLDER.

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If you mean on your Android device, then no, you can't access the files outside of the Dropbox app like that. Offline files are not visible in the file system.

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If not, then I should switch off the "Offline Use" (hopefully reclaiming the space) and transfer the files to my PC some old fashioned way like USB.

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You first mentioned Android and now you're saying PC. I'm confused as to what you're actually trying to accomplish.

[AndrewR]

My bad, I meant transfer "from" my PC to my Android phone.

So, since you've confirmed that Dropbox won't do this for me, I'll just zip the folder on my PC, get it on the phone somehow, and then unzip the folder there.

Thanks!

[AndrewR]

So the solution I accepted answered my question (what I wanted to do isn't possible), but here is a sequence of steps I found without using USB:

- From anywhere, generate the "Share" link for your folder

- Send it to your phone however you like

- Open the link using "Incognito Mode" on your browser. This is important because you don't want it opened in your Dropbox account, if you are auto-logged in there; Dropbox will mess it up. 

- Likewise, if you get a choice to open in App or Browser, choose Browser.

- Now you will get Dropbox's anonymous page for non-users. This has a "Download" button.

- Click Download and this will download a .zip file of the folder on your phone. Be careful if your folder is huge, this may take a lot of time and data usage, so you might want to download over WiFi. Mine was 15GB.

Once you have your folder you can unpack that into a regular folder on your phone using common tools. Hope this helps someone. It shocks me that such a simple use-case is so hard on Dropbox after all this time - seeing your own folders on your phone, AS A FOLDER. Wow.

[AndrewR]

Sorry, I replied to myself instead of you, earlier, and just realized it now. Thank you for the help; you answered my question.