You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Turning on dropbox backup but folder name is weird
I had tested the Dropbox Backup feature in the past so I know that when turned on my Computers should be added as My Mac (Unique Mac Name). I decided to turn it back on again when setting up two new ...
OK, they are finally rolling up a Beta update for Dropbox Backup that will let you rename and I was able to do it! You can do go through Dropbox Backup in the app, disable the backups on all the computers there, and then restart them. Then, re-enable backups and it should move you over to beta so you can now rename things!
The device names registered in my dropbox are
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey tjanderson, thanks for reaching out and sorry for the delay!
It seems that this change was implemented to simplify things with the computer backup folders.
The folder of the first computer that is connected to the account is named 'Mac' and the next one 'Mac (2)', etc.
This cannot be changed at the moment and the folders cannot be renamed.
Let me know if you have any questions!Hi Hannah,
Thanks for the confirmation this is expected behavior now.
Please pass along the feedback though I think this is a bad design choice and really doesn't simplify anything.
In my use case I have three different macs all with backup enabled. Which one is Mac or Mac (2) or Mac (3)?
If I'm on my iPad and know that I need to get a document that was saved in my iMacs Document folder - which Mac folder would I go to?
The previous setup where it would be Mac (Device Name) made these scenarios easy but giving a generic name makes it somewhat unusable unless you only had a single Mac or maybe a single Mac and single PC.
At this point I will turn off the backup features from Dropbox as I can't use this as is.
- HannahI do understand your view on this, TJ, and I will happily pass this feedback and your comments along to our team.
If there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know.
I have three Mac computers connected to dropbox, all are now Mac (1), Mac (2), Mac (3) — this is despite them having distinguishable names in the system share settings. Please change this feature so that computers can be named, there is no benefit to this ambiguity.
Is this still the case? Why doesn't it use the device name or computer account name? It's incredibly inconvenient to use a naming convention like this. Especially if you're trying to access files via terminal but the name has parenthesis in it.
