How to view previews of online-only files on desktop (like how you can in the mobile app)? - macOS

[meganh32]

I'm trying to figure out how to see previews, specifically of .jpeg online files, on my mac desktop. I use Dropbox almost exclusively for photo management and it's frustrating not even being able to see a preview so I can figure out which files I need to download locally (I just moved from an old computer that had enough storage to download everything offline to a new computer with much less storage so almost everything is online). I can do this on my android app. All of the online-only files on the mobile app are fully previewable and I can scroll through everything before deciding what to download. Is this possible on the desktop?

[pedroms]

hi sam,

any updates about the issue?

thanks!

[Sam DBX]

Hi @pedroms 👋🏽‌, hope you're doing well.

At the moment, I'm unable to provide you with an exact timeframe, but we're aware of these reports, and it's definitely on our team's radar. 

We'll keep everyone updated here.

Thanks.

[johnbroemstrup]

Would be great if this will be fixed soon! It is a key feature issue for me as a photographer! and apparently for a lot of others!

[WaterWater]

Sam, it’s been ONE FULL YEAR since this was reported! Soon, yeah right. It’s obvious your position as Community Manger is simply to make excuses and string us along. Enough! Please elevate this complaint. Transfer this case up to a more senior level. We are all fed up and tired of a year’s worth of “we’re working on it.” We need to do our work and we’d all be fired if all we had for our clients—for a year—was endless excuses.

[classic mesa]

Anyone solved this? It's driving me insane! 😠

[FedericoP]

I have the same issue in a lot of Mac computers in my company. Dropbox v.198.4.7615

[FedericoP]

I have an update that could be helpful for other users and dropbox technicians.

In my company we have a lot of mac with different version of macOS: Monterey, Ventura and Sonoma. I've seen that the file preview works with Monterey OS and also the user is able to sync more than 500.000 files in his machine without any error.

With Sonoma the preview function works only with illustrator (.ai) and .eps files but doesn't work with: pdf, csv, png, jpeg, jpg, html

Also the user that has Sonoma is not able to sync every file and folder archived in the cloud. In my case we are talking about 3 milions of files (14TB). The client returns an error "sync interrupted" and you have to choose you want to sync. 

Every Mac machine in my company has Apple Silicon M1/M3 Pro 

Thank you

[_MKT]

So this notification popped up in my dropbox today, I'm cautiously optimistic but also slightly terrified as the linked help article seems to indicate all our links will break and it seems like a huge change... I can get on board with that if it fixes the image preview issue, which I desperately hope for, but am skeptical after so long. 

The linked article was:
https://help.dropbox.com/plans/upcoming-business-team-changes#moreorg

[CharlotteR]

I wonder if this is the same update that happened for me on April 28.

If so, it didn't change anything about the thumbnails, but did manage to break all my automations in Zapier because Zapier can no longer connect to my Teams folders. 🙄

Hours of re-doing zaps, and going back and forth with Zapier and Dropbox support about it. But that's a separate issue!

[_MKT]

I'm deeply suspicious it will break every Indesign image link I have and mean I have to recreate alias shortcuts for every one of the 20ish jobs I'm currently working on as well as relinking hundreds of images, but I'd take the hit if it meant thumbnail image previews were coming back on mac. However I expect it's the same one you mentioned. Sigh.