Dropbox is accessible via a browser or desktop client for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Before you can use it, though, you must head to Dropbox.com and sign up for an account. After doing that, you’re prompted to download the Dropbox app, which then creates a Dropbox folder. Any files you put in it are uploaded to the cloud and become available on other devices where you’ve installed Dropbox, as well as on the web app. Depending on your settings, your files may also be available offline (more on that in a moment).
Dropbox’s desktop app primarily lives as an icon in the Windows system tray or Mac menu bar. Click it to see a summary of files that have recently been uploaded, or select your profile icon in the top-right corner to find the settings. From there, you can enable or disable the backup feature, set a bandwidth cap, choose which notifications you want to see, and select the files to sync to your device.
(Credit: Dropbox/PCMag)
You should pay special attention to the syncing settings. Dropbox, by necessity, works differently than it did in the first few years after it launched. Back then, the model was to sync files directly from your computer to the cloud and to other computers from there. The problem today is that, at 2TB, Dropbox’s cheapest paid plan offers more space than most people have on their computers, phones, or tablets. If you sync files from multiple devices and Dropbox copies all those files to every device you sync, you won’t have room for them locally.
The result is a welcome compromise. When I set up Dropbox on a PC that didn’t already have the application installed, all the new files were available online by default. It changed when I opened a file, causing the cloud icon to disappear and the file to be downloaded and made available for offline use. To summarize, the default setting doesn’t sync all your files; rather, it makes them available and visible. Dropbox only downloads the files when you open them. This is good if you want to save storage space.
It’s worth noting that this selective syncing feature is only available to paid customers, and it’s currently not fully working on macOS. Dropbox advises Mac users to make files available offline before opening them with third-party software. If you don’t want to use this feature, you can instead exclude certain folders from appearing on any of your synced devices.
You can back up your computer’s documents, desktop, downloads, music, pictures, and movies folders. There’s no way to back up other folders, which might annoy people with multiple hard drives. It makes sense, though. Dropbox isn’t aiming to be a full-fledged backup service like IDrive; it’s only meant to keep a copy of your data safe and synced. That said, Dropbox has versioning, which let me revert a file to any version created in the last 30 days.
The desktop app adds a few other nice-to-have features. For example, you can enable Dropbox as a save location in Microsoft 365, and an overlay in the Office app lets you track document versions.
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The nice thing about the web version of Dropbox is that you don’t really need to use it very often. That’s a compliment. You can do almost everything in Dropbox using the desktop app, which is relatively rare in today’s software ecosystem. The web interface is a competent alternative to the desktop or mobile experience, letting you browse and manage all your files, preview hundreds of file types, and easily restore any file you deleted in the past 30 days. That applies if you have Dropbox Basic, Plus, or Family.
