Storing your photos in Dropbox is simple, and it’s easy to get to your image and video files once they're backed up – across all your devices. For Windows and Mac sync, you can just install the Dropbox desktop app, and all of your photos will appear in folders that you can access from Windows File Explorer and macOS Finder on your desktop. Storing your photos in Dropbox is simple and it’s easy to get to your image and video files once they're backed up—across all your devices. For Windows and Mac sync, you can just install the Dropbox desktop app, and all your photos will appear in folders you can access from Windows File Explorer and macOS Finder on your desktop. On Mac B, you should see the library appear in its Dropbox folder as Dropbox starts syncing the data across. Wait until the checkmark by the library turns green, indicating that Dropbox has finished syncing. Double click the library on Mac B to open it in Photos, which it will do happily, even though the library is still open on Mac A. Dropbox – administration and work files for use at home iCloud 50GB – Apple related, photos. OneDrive – a few work related files. The bulk of storage is with Google. I went with that and Dropbox after Apple left MobileMe iDisk users without a direct transition to iCloud.
If you recently upgraded to the latest version of macOS, and you have the Dropbox desktop app installed on your computer, we recommend you update to the latest version of Dropbox for the best experience.
Notifications
After updating your device, you’ll see a notification that says “Dropbox Would Like to Send You Notifications”.
Clicking Allow ensuresyou’ll stay up-to-date on all of your file activity.
You can change your notification preferences at any time by opening System Preferences and clicking Notifications.
Camera uploads
When you plug your mobile device into your computer after updating to the latest version of macOS, you’ll see a notification that says “’Dropbox’ would like to access files on a removable volume.”
Dropbox Mac Photos Library
Clicking OK ensures Dropbox uploads photos from your mobile device automatically. Learn more about Camera uploads.
Screenshots and screen recordings
After taking your first screenshot or screen recording, you may see a notification that says “’Dropbox’ would like to access files in your Desktop folder.”
Clicking OK allows all of your screenshots and screen recordings to automatically save to a Dropbox folder called Screenshots.
11
Don’t store your photo library on Dropbox
I see a lot of users of both PowerPhotos and iPhoto Library Manager who want to store their iPhoto/Photos library in Dropbox. This is totally understandable, as it would provide an easy way to keep your library synced between two Macs, and would be totally awesome… if it worked reliably. Unfortunately, the way the library is stored internally does not mesh well with how Dropbox’s syncing works, and can easily result in data corruption. Here’s how that can happen.
Photos uses a series of SQLite database files to store the data for the library. This includes thing like lists of all the photos in the library, all the metadata for those photos, how they’re organized into moments and albums, and so forth. Each SQLite database is essentially a single file (though a couple helper files are also used while the database is open) which contains however many hundreds or thousands of database records are required to store all the information for the library.
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When you make a change in your library, such as creating a new album, Photos will modify the database with the new data necessary for whatever changes you made. SQLite makes this process very efficient, only needing to modify a small portion of the file to add/modify the necessary data, rather than having to write out an entirely new copy of the database file for each individual change.
Dropbox, on the other hand, performs all of its syncing on a per-file basis. So, when Photos make a small modification to one of its database files, Dropbox will copy the entire data file again. Here’s an easy way to demonstrate how this can cause data loss in your library, using two Macs, which we’ll call Mac A and Mac B. (everything here applies to iPhoto and Aperture libraries as well)
- On Mac A, create a new Photos library in your Dropbox folder, either by holding down the option key while launching Photos, or by using PowerPhotos to create the library.
- Import a bunch of photos into the library, just to give us a bit of content to work with.
- On Mac B, you should see the library appear in its Dropbox folder as Dropbox starts syncing the data across. Wait until the checkmark by the library turns green, indicating that Dropbox has finished syncing.
- Double click the library on Mac B to open it in Photos, which it will do happily, even though the library is still open on Mac A. You should see the same content you added to the library on Mac A.
- Create a new album in the library on Mac B, and name it “Album B”. Add a couple photos to it if you’d like.
- Over on Mac A, create an album in the library called “Album A”. Add a couple photos to it if you’d like.
- Quit Photos on both Macs, in any order. You should see a flurry of Dropbox syncing activity on both machines, which will eventually settle down as Dropbox finishes its syncing.
- Open the library back up on Mac A, and open the library back up on Mac B.
You will most likely see either Album A show up on both machines, or Album B show up on both machines, but not both. This is because, while both Macs have modified their own local copy of the library database, Dropbox does not have the smarts to merge the bits of those files that have changed together (nor should it). One of the databases will overwrite the other one, blowing away whatever changes were made there. Which one survives and which one doesn’t will depend entirely on the timing of Dropbox’s syncing.
If you’re less lucky, one or both of the libraries won’t be openable in Photos at all, which will display a message saying that it needs to repair the library database. Even if it successfully completes the repair, you will either only see one of your new albums in the resulting library, or perhaps neither of them.
Now, it is theoretically possible to make a setup like this work, if you make sure not to open both libraries at once, and always remember to close Photos on one machine before using it on the other, and always remember to wait for Dropbox to completely finish syncing your files before opening the library, and Dropbox never has a hiccup or delay in copying one of those database files, and so on. Oh, and if you decide to use this library as your system and/or iCloud photo library, meaning the system always has the library open in the background? Fugetaboutit.
Dropbox Photo Albums
This is actually more dangerous than an obvious immediate failure, because doing this can actually work OK, for a while at least. But you’re definitely playing with fire if you use this to sync your library on a long term basis.
Dropbox Mac Download
Apple could try to add some sort of lock file that might prevent simultaneous opening of a library on two machines, but that would still leave plenty of room for syncing to screw things up, along with other various downsides. In my opinion, they should just disallow Photos from directly opening a library from Dropbox at all (filed with Apple as bug 20902778. They actually already disallow creating or opening a Photos library that’s stored on iCloud Drive, presumably for similar reasons (though the resulting error message isn’t exactly user friendly). I’m also planning on adding checks for this in the next updates to iPhoto Library Manager and PowerPhotos, to at least warn people about putting a library in Dropbox.