What you need to know
- Dropbox is adding better syncing to its Mac app.
- Syncing will no work beyond folders to documents, downloads, and desktop.
- It means you'll be able to see all of these things across your Dropbox enabled devices.
Dropbox is adding new syncing capabilities to its Mac app, to extend the feature beyond folders to documents, downloads, and desktop.
As reported by 9to5Mac:
Dropbox on the Mac has slowly been expanding its feature set and how it works, and today, the latest beta adds the option to sync your documents, downloads, and desktop. In my testing (download folder only), it worked as advertised. Once enabled, there will be a My Mac folder in your dropbox that will contain all of your downloads folder. I am still trying to wrap my head around how Dropbox is going to keep this integrated with macOS so the user doesn't notice some strange things happening.This feature will likely be very popular with enterprise Dropbox users as it will then become a quasi backup solution. The default place for a lot of people's document storage is on the desktop. Instead of having to re-train people to store documents in a Dropbox folder for syncing, files can be stored in the big three 3 locations. Some of the users I support have thousands of files in their downloads, so this would make it easy to migrate to a new Mac (or access all of their files from the web). It will also be beneficial when switching to an iPhone or iPad as all of a user's files will be available.
As noted the feature is currently in beta, so unavailable to most users, however, it is indeed in the pipeline. Dropbox is a handy tool for professional and personal use alike, allowing users to sync files across numerous devices, or within groups of people. The new syncing features will push Dropbox forward at a time when Apple is improving its own iCloud file-sharing capabilities with iOS 13.4, particularly thanks to folder sharing.
