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Forum Discussion
Desktop access without syncing.
Hello. I see it mentioned a few times previously, but am wondering if there is any active development on a way to access Dropbox files from the desktop without either syncing or using the web app...basically as a file server.
It sounds like this would be a common use case. I need to be able to save/print files from an application to Dropbox (for Business), but don't need the overhead of keeping those files locally and syncing them.
Does anyone know if Dropbox has at least considered this kind of functionality?
Thank you.
This thread is YEARS out of date Andrey - Dropbox themselves have been doing it now for awhile. Its called 'Smart Sync' which you can read about https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/smart-sync
The ability to host remote files is ABSOLUTELY possible on all 3 OS's WIN,OSX,NIX.
The current difficulty exists only with mounting as a folder on an existing drive.
To quickly complete this dropbox would only need to change styles from a folder to a drive letter.
They could still option to also store files in the folder and have those and the cloud files appear on the "web" drive, and mount it as a network drive as having the folder would leave multiple agrees points to the data. Or store the localized files in there own data file and present only the "web" drive as a local mounted drive.
You could designate cloud or local on any file, and also have some algorithmic code for what to maintain locally (heavy use files)
Where did they say, you had to have a laptop drive?
- Ed
Dropbox Staff
That's a current limitation on the Selective Sync feature that we're aware of. At the moment, what you can do is use the website www.dropbox.com to navigate through all your folders that are not synced to your computer.
It would be definitively awesome if it is possible to manage alle the DB content as local even if it's remote. It would be the key to drive DB services over any other cloud vendor. Anyone of us needs to access their own files by a specific local path, be serious please, we live in a WiFi over-coverd world.
- Mark
Super User II
It is now coming as Dave said. As to if this will be available to everybody or just specific customer bases we dont know yet.
@Mark Thanks, I missed that message. Funny to see how dropbox itself recognizes that the web interfaces are clunky. Any idea on when this should happen?
is the current selective sync limitation going to be improved? is this limitation in existence for both mac and PC or it's just a MAC problem?
I have the same problem right now. Guillem B. did a great job of describing it a few comments above, my situation is very similar. What would be really cool is if we could sync our folders without syncing the content, or something to that effect.
Great discussion. I am having exactly the same problem as Guillem B. above. Many thanks to Alex C. for the CloudMounter suggestion. This is definitely a great solution in the meantime. I just downloaded the trial version and while I seem to lose the ability to tag files and folders (I guess that makes sense since it's not really "on" my computer) it is completely fabulous to be able to access both Dropbox and Google Drive through the Pathfinder interface without having to physically sync with files on my computer. Brilliant!! Thank you all!
Ugh. Spoke too soon. I can open files from PathFinder but it does not want to let me transfer file from my desktop to Dropbox. Sigh ... so close ...
