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Forum Discussion
How to speed up Dropbox uploads on iPhone
Dropbox sync only happens when I have the Dropbox iPhone app actively open, and even then it takes about 5 minutes to upload a single photo. This is for camera roll sync.
Hi there, I’m Antonio, a member of the Dropbox Mobile team. I wanted to talk about our upload process on iOS and address its current constraints:
If you are manually uploading files into your Dropbox using the plus (“+”) button, keep in mind that uploads will only run while the app is in the foreground. When the app is backgrounded, Dropbox can only run for a few minutes before the device will stop the process to save battery. To remedy this, we recommend keeping the app open while an upload is in progress.
If you are using the camera uploads feature to automatically upload photos from your Camera Roll to Dropbox, you can turn on “Background Uploading”. This will allow your photos and videos to continue uploading even if you don’t have the app open. Additionally, this feature uses location changes to trigger uploads as you move around throughout the day (this is why we ask you to enable “Location Services” when you enable this feature). Keep in mind that if there isn’t a significant location change after a few minutes, the device will stop the process, and photos or videos will no longer upload in the background.
Syncing can be slower if you have “iCloud Photo Library” enabled on your device, and have enabled “Optimize iPhone Storage” in your iCloud Photo settings. This feature stores high resolution versions of your files to the cloud, and keeps optimized versions of the files on your device. When Dropbox attempts to automatically upload these files, we have to first connect to iCloud’s servers to download the high resolution photo, and then sync that photo to your Dropbox. This can be a slow process that is dependent upon the strength of the server connection to iCloud. Additionally, this process is limited to WiFi-only (even if you have the camera uploads feature enabled over cellular data).
With these constraints in mind, here are some recommendations when uploading your files:
- If you have a desktop with the Dropbox desktop app installed, you can use the desktop camera uploads feature. This automatically transfers any new photos or videos to your Dropbox when you plug your device to your computer (read more about this feature here).
- If you don’t have a desktop, ensure that your Dropbox mobile app has “Background Uploading” enabled for your camera uploads. You can do this by going to the Recents tab, selecting the gear icon, selecting Camera Uploads and toggling the “Background Uploading” switch on.
- When uploading files using the plus (“+”) button, keep the Dropbox app open while the upload is in progress.
We’re always working on improving the background upload experience and greatly appreciate your feedback. We'll keep monitoring this thread and will do our best to reply to any other questions not addressed by this explanation.
I'm having the same issue. In the iOS app, it takes a while when it moves to the next picture to upload before the upload bar starts progressing, When the progress bar starts, it goes very quickly, but it takes a long time to start progressing. It is almost as if it is doing some sort of processing or something. I wonder if it has to do with the large number of pictures on my camera roll. I have ~45k pics in there. I have iCloud Photos turned on so they're not all actually on my phone, but DB may still have to do some sort of processing where as the number of photos increases, the "processing time" also increases. Just a theory.
For me, Dropbox always uploads all the images first before the videos, even if they are newer. The images actually upload reasonably fast (in the order of seconds, maybe because they are small). My upload backlog seems to comprise entirely of videos.
So my contribution towards the theory is that the files are being uploaded in order according to file size from small to large.
SERIOUSLY why is this still such an issue? Carousel was so fast and then it went away. Seriously going to stop using dropbox if this issue is not addressed soon.
Same on my iPhone.
Dropbox, I want carousel back on my phone!
Ditto. I can't stand the slow uploads. Also, unlike Carousel, the Dropbox app requires me to share my location in order to do background uploading. WHY?!?! I won't enable background uploading because of this silly requirement, which means that if I want to backup videos I have to either dig into my phone's settings and disable sleep, or sit next to my phone and tap it every so often to keep it awake. Ugh.
I switched to Dropbox Pro because Carousel was so good and my primary use is backing up family photos. But now that it's gone, and Dropbox is so painfully slow, I'm looking for an alternative for me and a few family members.
Tick tick.... Still waiting for a response from Dropbox tech support on this.... And the comments continue to grow...
This is seriously ridiculous! Is there any way to get this to go faster? I've been going on DAYS to upload one video and I can't wipe out my iPhone photos as I'm not sure which ones have uploaded and which have not. Please help!
Same as everyone else... For what seems like more than a year I can't upload anything but a few photos to Dropbox. I currently have 1300+ photos/videos waiting in que. Can't back anything up on my iPhone. What's up?
I'm using google photos and Dropbox. Google app uploaded 250 photos in less than an hour, Dropbox has uploaded 40 photos in 4 hours. Terrible speed
I had the same issue with slow upload. I was using Dropbox Professsional on my MacBook Pro running High Sierra and uploading my 500GB of data was at least 19-days long. Like many users, the harddisk storage was limited and I needed a solution to store my documents so I could access it anywhere (I had been using external harddisk but I wanted to try out a cloud solution). So I consulted the helpdesk who were nice, helpful and all. I also tried various recommendations from the web forum but nothing worked for me. So I tried something I should have done a long time ago- upgrade my router.
Where I live, Internet speed was high and I subscribed to a high bandwidth package. Realising that the download and especially upload speed with Dropbox were significantly lower than the reported speeds using some Internet Speedtest app, I only had one thing to do. I replaced my existing router with Asus rt-ac68u. And glory! Not only did my upload complete is less than 4 hours (which is still long), my Internet speed on all my devices and Internet TV improved significantly!
In summary, you may want to consult your local Internet Service Provider and community of users to design your own strategy. Note that thes service providers, user community and Dropbox staff will tell you different things and rightfully so. You will have to discern what may work for you better. I'm just happy that my local forum provided a simple advice that did it for me.I didn't provide all the necessary data and information to rule out other intervening possibilities. I just wanted to get straight to point and that is to check your Internet access, especially your router capability. Hope this helps!
- This is ridiculous. I sit here on my iPhone and I watch the uploads of my video stop and start. Why does it trickle? Can you turn this off? This is not an ISP or settings issue. WTF. This has been going on forever. Why cant you fix this **bleep** already. Why the **bleep** should I keep paying for this **bleep**? I work in IT for 20 years. This is a Dropbox and IOS issue. Why are you not addressing this? Instead you are deflecting the problem to ISPs or wrong settings. We are not all stupid in computer land. Stop insulting our intelligence and fix the **bleep**ing issue already. Im this close to removing all my files and canceling my service. Im sick of this already.
