- One of my Dropbox clients is on a MacBook. I currently have my Dropbox set up on my Mac, and have successfully accessed the Mac Dropbox folder in Windows XP via Parallels Shared Folder. However, now I need to access the same Windows XP installation via Boot Camp.
- Disable automatic Dropbox sync in Notebooks. Create a book in the location and with the title of the Dropbox folder you do not want to sync. Open the book's info and turn off Sync Dropbox. Now you can enable Dropbox sync again. From now on, manual and automatic Dropbox sync will ignore this book and its contents.
Our built-in antivirus checked this Mac download and rated it as 100% safe. The following versions: 3.2, 3.0 and 1.3 are the most frequently downloaded ones by the program users. The bundle id for this app is com.getdropbox.dropbox. Dropbox for Mac lies within Productivity Tools, more precisely Cloud Services.
Installing and using Dropbox on your Mac can simplify sharing files with other devices you may own. It can also serve as an easy way to share photos or send large files to others. It’s no wonder that Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud-based storage systems.
While we'll be looking primarily at the Mac version, Dropbox is also available for Windows, Linux, and most mobile platforms, including iOS devices.
Once you set up a Dropbox account and download and install the application, it will appear on your Mac as a special Dropbox folder. Anything you place inside the folder is automatically copied to the cloud-based storage system, and is synced with any other devices you use that are also running Dropbox. This means you can be working on a document on your Mac, head off to work, and go back to work on the document, knowing it's exactly the same version as the one you were just fiddling with at home.
Dropbox isn't the only cloud-based storage and syncing service for the Mac, but it's currently one of the most popular. It does have some pretty stiff competition, though, including Microsoft's SkyDrive, Google's Google Drive, Box.net, and SugarSync.
As a Mac user, you also have the option of using Apple’s native cloud service, iCloud. When iCloud first came to the Mac, there was a glaring omission: it lacked any general storage capability. Sure, you could save files to iCloud, provided the app that created the files was iCloud-savvy.
In later versions of iCloud, Apple included a general-purpose cloud-based storage system, making iCloud a very handy and easy-to-use service that's already integrated with your Mac.
![Dropbox Manual For Mac Dropbox Manual For Mac](/uploads/1/2/4/6/124612731/368922391.jpg)
So, why consider Dropbox? There are many reasons, including making use of multiple cloud-based services to keep your costs for storing data in the cloud down. Almost all cloud services offer a free level, so why not take advantage of the no-cost storage? Another reason is app integration with cloud-based services. Many apps integrate themselves with various cloud-based storage services to offer additional features. Dropbox is one of the more commonly used cloud-based systems used by third-party apps.
Dropbox is available in four basic pricing plans; the first three let you expand the amount of storage you have by referring others to the service. For example, the basic free version of Dropbox will give you 500 MB per referral, to a maximum of 18 GB of free storage.
Dropbox Pricing
Installing Dropbox
You can grab the installer by downloading it from the Dropbox website.
Dropbox Free Account
- Once the download is complete, look for the installer in your Downloads folder. The file name is DropboxInstaller.dmg. (At times, Dropbox’s name for the download included the version number.) Open the installer image file by double-clicking the Dropbox Installer.dmg file.
- Within the Dropbox Installer window that opens, double-click the Dropbox icon.
- A notice will appear warning you the Dropbox is an app downloaded from the Internet. You can click the Open button to continue.
- Dropbox will download any updates the installer needs and then start the installation process.
- Once the basic installation is complete, a Dropbox icon will be added to your Mac’s menu bar, the Dropbox app will be installed in your /Applications folder, and you'll be presented with the Dropbox sign-in window.
- If you have an existing Dropbox account, you can enter your email address and password; otherwise, click the Sign-Up link near the bottom right corner of the window, and then provide the requested sign-up info.
- After you sign in, the Dropbox window will display a congratulations message for successfully completing the installation. Click the Open My Dropbox Folder button.
- Dropbox needs your account password in order for the new Dropbox folder and system to work correctly with your Mac. Enter your password, and then click OK.
- Dropbox will add itself to your Finder’s sidebar, as well as deposit a Get Started with Dropbox PDF into your Dropbox folder.
- Take a few moments to read through the getting started guide; it provides a good outline for working with Dropbox.
Using Dropbox With Your Mac
Dropbox installs a login item into, as well as integrates itself into, the Finder. This configuration can be changed at any time using the Dropbox preferences. You can find the Dropbox preferences by selecting the Dropbox menu item, and then clicking the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the drop-down window. Select Preferences from the pop-up menu.
We recommend keeping the Finder integration option, and the option to start Dropbox whenever you start up your Mac. Together, both options make Dropbox act just like another folder on your Mac.
Using the Dropbox Folder
The Dropbox folder acts like any other folder on your Mac, with a couple of slight differences. The first is that any file you place within the folder is copied (synced) to the Dropbox cloud, making it available to all your devices either through the Dropbox website or via the Dropbox app you can install on all your devices.
My Dropbox
The second thing you'll notice is a new flag associated with files and folders within the Dropbox folder. This flag, which is seen in the list, column, and cover flow Finder views, shows the current sync status of the item. A green checkmark indicates the item has been successfully synced to the cloud. A blue circular arrow indicates syncing is in the process.
One last thing: While you can always access your data from the Dropbox website, it's easier, in the long run, to install Dropbox on all the Macs, PCs, and mobile devices you use.
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Dropbox Manual For Mac Os
Dropbox
One of the most popular bits of code around the Macworld offices is Dropbox. We’ve made videos about it, we’ve written about how to get more out of it, we’ve reviewed programs that take advantage of it, and we’ve even given it an Eddy award. But we’ve never reviewed Dropbox itself. So with Dropbox 1.0 for Mac officially released, it’s about time we did. And given that it’s free (more on that below), it’s about as good a candidate for Mac Gems as there is.
Put simply, Dropbox is an amazingly useful combination of a Web service and a Mac OS X program that work together to make your data accessible from anywhere and to keep it synchronized between your computers. Once you’ve installed the Dropbox application and set up a Dropbox account, anything you place in a special Dropbox folder on your Mac is automatically copied to the Dropbox servers, as well as to any other Macs you’ve set up with that Dropbox account. Similarly, whenever you make a change to data in your Dropbox folder on one Mac, those changes are quickly—almost immediately, as long as you have an active Internet connection—reflected in your Dropbox account on the Web and in the Dropbox folders on your other computers.
If this sounds a bit like the iDisk feature of Apple’s MobileMe service, that’s because it’s similar…except that Dropbox is fast and reliable. Dropbox is also more secure than iDisk, as files stored on the Dropbox servers are encrypted and are transferred using SSL. Dropbox is also smarter about copying files: It transfers smaller files before larger ones, copies only the parts of each file that have changed, and compresses all data for the trip. And Dropbox is better about handling sync conflicts—if the same document is modified on two computers at the same time, Dropbox keeps both copies, adding a “conflicted” message to the name of one.
If this is all Dropbox did, it would be immensely useful for keeping data in sync between Macs and for making them accessible from any computer with a Web browser. For example, I personally use my Dropbox folder for storing all my in-progress documents, letting me work on those documents from any of my Macs. I can also access those documents using the Dropbox app for iPhones and iPads, and I can even edit them on my iOS devices using apps such as the Elements text editor. In addition, many Mac programs, such as TextExpander and 1Password, can use Dropbox to ensure all your Macs have the same settings and data; and because your Dropbox folder is a standard Finder folder, you can use Automator or a utility such as Hazel to automate task across your Macs. But Dropbox does more—much, much more.
For starters, the Dropbox servers automatically save past versions of each synced file, letting you restore any version from the past 30 days using your account on the Dropbox Website. (You can access this feature quickly by right-clicking or Control-clicking a file in your Dropbox folder and choosing Dropbox -> View Previous Versions from the Finder’s contextual menu.) If you’ve got a Pro account—more on that below—you can opt for the Pack-Rat feature, which lets you restore any past version of a Dropbox-synced file, even those versions more than 30 days old.
But perhaps the most useful Dropbox extras relate to sharing your data, both publicly and privately. For starters, you can share any file within the Public folder inside your Dropbox folder by simply giving someone a special URL for that file. Although you can get this link using the Dropbox Website, the easier way is to simply right-click (Control-click) the file in the Finder and choose Dropbox -> Copy Public Link from the contextual menu. You can then paste that URL into an e-mail message, tweet, or document, and the recipient can just click the link to download the file.
You can also share entire folders within your Dropbox folder by right-clicking (Control-clicking) on a folder and choosing Dropbox -> Share This Folder. You’re taken to the Dropbox site, where you provide the e-mail addresses of the fellow Dropbox users you want to have access. Once one of your invitees logs in to their Dropbox account and accepts your invitation, your folder shows up inside their Dropbox folder. Similarly, you can access folders other users have shared with you.
When you accept the invitation to a shared folder, it appears in your Dropbox folder, and it acts exactly like any other folder, except that in addition to syncing between your computers and devices, it syncs with the Dropbox folder of the folder’s owner and every other person with whom the owner has shared the folder. What is the best survival hatchet. So, for example, if I add a document to a shared Dropbox folder on my Mac, that document magically appears on the Macs of every other person sharing the folder. This is a brilliant—and brilliantly simple—approach to sharing files and folders over the Internet without having to fuss with OS X’s File Sharing settings or worry about firewalls, routers, and IP addresses. (It also works great for people in the same location—my family uses a shared Dropbox folder for all household documents and information.)
Finally, there’s a sharing feature of Dropbox that often gets overlooked: Any images you drop into the Photos folder inside your Dropbox folder can be viewed in an automatically generated photo gallery on the Web; you create multiple galleries by simply creating subfolders. (To get the URL for a gallery, just right-click on a folder of photos, or go to your account on the Dropbox Website.) You can even share a folder inside your Photos folder, using the folder-sharing procedure described above, to let multiple people add photos to the same gallery. This is the easiest way I’ve found to quickly create an online photo gallery or slideshow.
While the Dropbox program mostly works its magic behind the scenes, there are a few useful options available to you. One of my favorites lets Dropbox display a Growl notification whenever new or updated files are synced to your local Dropbox folder. Another favorite, added to Dropbox earlier this year, is LAN sync: If you’ve got multiple Dropbox-configured computers on your local network, the Dropbox program on your Mac will contact those computers directly to check for new or modified files, rather than going through the Dropbox servers; any changes will similarly be copied directly from one computer to the other, over your network, rather than over the Internet. The end result is much faster syncing between local computers.
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The other big new feature of Dropbox 1.0, Selective Sync, lets you choose exactly which files and folders are synced to each of your computers. For example, if you’ve got a MacBook Air with a small drive, and you don’t want everything in the Dropbox folder on your desktop Mac to be synced to your Air, you can open Dropbox’s settings window on your laptop, click Selective Sync, and then choose only the essential Dropbox-synced files and folders. The rest of your data will still exist on your desktop Mac and on the Dropbox servers, but it won’t take up space on your MacBook Air.
Earlier versions of Dropbox didn’t properly copy file metadata such as Mac OS resource forks, which meant that if you wanted to ensure certain types of Mac files—for example, Internet location files and text clippings—remained usable when synced between Macs, you had to compress them into, say, .zip files before placing them in your Dropbox folder. But DropBox 1.0 fixes that flaw, as well.
One of the few flaws Dropbox 1.0 didn’t fix is that the program still places your Dropbox folder, by default, at the root level of your Home folder, in violation of Apple’s developer guidelines. But at least you can manually change that location in the program’s preferences.
The Dropbox application and a basic account, which can sync up to 2GB of data, are free. If you need to be able to sync more data, you can upgrade to a Dropbox Pro 50 account ($99/year for 50GB of data) or a Pro 100 account ($199/year for 100GB of data). You can also get more space by referring friends—you get 250MB for each friend that creates their own Dropbox account.
Dropbox is an indispensable part of my workflow, and it keeps getting better and better with each release. Now that it handles most Mac metadata properly, it integrates seamlessly with the Finder; and with Web-browser access, as well as Dropbox software—and Dropbox-enabled third-party programs—available for OS X, Windows, Linux, and iOS, you can access and edit your data from anywhere and any device. I have yet to find an easier way to share data with other computers and other people. And did I mention the outstanding documentation? If the developers keep this up, Dropbox just might win another Eddy.
Updated 12/24/2010, 3:45pm to clarify that restoring versions older than 30 days requires the Pack-Rat option of a Pro account.
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