Had It With the Dropbox App? Here Are Five Alternative Dropbox Clients

[ktecac]

I think it's matter of months for a M1 native app to be out. Keep in mind that % of Apple M1 users is way below significant considering entire base of Dropbox users.

True - but I still found the app incredibly slow and frustrating to sync for a long time. In my case it's 'limit bandwidth' for upload option never actually worked - so if I ever put a large file in to sync it completely strangled by network.

It's browser interface got worse too - I swear I used to be able to right click on things and get a nice context menu but eventually i had to start checking on everything and finding wherever they placed the action buttons etc. (Admittedly, the browser interface frustrations I had could be something particular to my browser/machine).

It could be a bit of nostalgia kicking in but I remember loving Dropbox and finding it such a joy to use until about 2016 and after that it became an overpriced pain in the ass. iCloud definitely not perfect either but at least I'm not paying for 500+ GB of storage I don't need.

 

[Okasian]

I have about 600 GB in Dropbox, near 400.000 files. A couple of days ago I tested some of those:

• Maestral: Used 100% one CPU, selected only two folders to sync, only one was synchronised.
• CloudMounter: a mess with file dates, plus a lot of sync issues when uploading heavy files.
• Strongsync: Evaluated, never got a full sync.
• Mountain Duck behave similar as Maestral. I don't remember what did wrong, but failed to do some operations losing the file changes.

I think Dropbox is bad, but other those third party tools are worse when you want real hard job done. Any cloud can manage 10.000 files. Problems happens when you have it tens of thousands, even iCloud Drive.

Strongsync implements, and is limited by the new FileProvider framework under the hood, so it would be the operating system (Big Sur, Monterey) that would be doing the synchronisation in that instance.

The others create temporary filesystems using MacFUSE, SSHFS etc. More Info...

 

[DZapata]

I have 19 Terabytes on dropbox - over a 1/2 a Million files. I use it every day to upload 20 gig files to TV stations around the world - I can do sometimes 2 gigs a minute. I love dropbox - I moved from BOX to OneDrive to Dropbox and I like Dropbox better than the other two services.

 

[GtrDude]

Apple doesn’t care about you either 🙄

100% true statement. They care a LOT about getting our money though...lol

 

[NufSaid]

Dropbox is a killer app but blown away they don't offer this. I haven't updated to an M1 mac yet but will do so soon. Not liking this at all.

They spend a lot of time developing trash add ons to their product and make a big deal of them.

 

[NufSaid]

People comparing dropbox to onedrive to icloud are probably not using any dropbox features. It syncs faster than others, advanced sharing is super-easy, even with people outside of your family/company and backup/restore/versioning is unparalleled. If you don't need those features, then yes, you can switch to whatever is cheap. The client sucks (it will of course be apple silicon native at some point), but so does onedrive, google drive, and icloud isn't that much better because it is too dumb and you have zero control.

I agree.

I have about 12 TB in the cloud and use all kinds of features. It is great for working with other people/businesses. iCloud doesn't have what dropbox has (it is nice but no comparison on the pro level)

 

[krusnof]

Same here. Sharing of folders finally allowed me to make that move. I know its not for everyone, but so nice not having to rely on dropbox.

I made the switch too but I def miss more simple sharing options that Dropbox had. It's possible but more steps and some non-logic in the UX. Also, I have "Waiting to Upload" on most of my desktop folders all day long—even when nothing is updated and it's 500/500 fiber wired connection. Hope they fix that soon.

 

[PC_tech]

100% true statement. They care a LOT about getting our money though...lol

That’s all they care about 😂😂

 

[ponzicoinbro]

If you don’t need syncing you can use Dropbox and just about all these other services drag and drop with Safari.

 

[Mr. Dee]

I’m already using iCloud and free OneDrive. I pay for iCloud and since I have a few copies of Office 365 I’ll utilize them in the future. But I’m slowly weaning myself from Microsoft products.

 

[pdaholic]

So how is streaming large video files from iCloud Drive? No?

I’ve never had issues with Dropbox on my 8 year old Mac. Guess I’ve been lucky?

 

[maxsquared]

Only thing iCloud Drive doesn't do is selective sync. It would be perfect if it does.

The speed of iCloud is great for me, 1 gb up and down, for me Dropbox is actually slower.

 

[posguy99]

... I figured these cloud services were one part of a sound data backup plan?

I can't guess why you'd think so. Any sort of sync is no sort of backup.

 

[Bustycat]

Already gave up on Dropbox when the team started to focus on the confusing dropbox.design website.

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

There's not really anything I miss in iCloud Drive apart from maybe the ability to stop files downloading to all Macs BEFORE they've downloaded…

This was driving me absolutely crazy. Apple does a lot of things right but I’m still confused by their ‘optimize storage’ options. Why don’t you just make it clear - download files to Mac, or only store files on iCloud? And why can’t I stop them from downloading? I have to wait for the slow downloads to complete, then delete the files from Mac and hope that iCloud doesn’t decide to sync them again

Also yes the iCloud upload speeds are pathetic. But honestly Dropbox was only a little bit better in that regard

I stopped using Dropbox but when I was last using it, I deleted the Dropbox app and only used it in safari. I’ll never load Dropbox software onto a computer again.

 

[BornAgainMac]

This year, I stopped using Evernote and switched to Apple Notes. And using iCloud and some free options instead of Dropbox.

 

[LeadingHeat]

What aspects of Dropbox does not work for you?

Did you read the article that these comments are based off of? Those issues.

 

[mrwuf]

This was driving me absolutely crazy. Apple does a lot of things right but I’m still confused by their ‘optimize storage’ options. Why don’t you just make it clear - download files to Mac, or only store files on iCloud? And why can’t I stop them from downloading? I have to wait for the slow downloads to complete, then delete the files from Mac and hope that iCloud doesn’t decide to sync them again

Also yes the iCloud upload speeds are pathetic. But honestly Dropbox was only a little bit better in that regard

I stopped using Dropbox but when I was last using it, I deleted the Dropbox app and only used it in safari. I’ll never load Dropbox software onto a computer again.

Ostensibly, they don't provide that control to make it "simple," but I'm guessing it's also so people buy more device storage, for which they charge ridiculous upgrade prices.

 

[nebojsak]

Did you read the article that these comments are based off of? Those issues.

Got it, you didn't even use it.

 

[ktecac]

I can't guess why you'd think so. Any sort of sync is no sort of backup.

So if I throw my macbook pro off my yacht and its lost in the ocean forever then Dropbox's servers know this and deletes everything??? But in all seriousness I thought that having a dropbox folder set up; then any files in that folder are on my local device AND on dropbox. If my local device vanishes - then surely, without some kind of trigger, the remote dropbox copies would not be lost, right?

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

Got it, you didn't even use it.

Got it, you didn’t read the article and/or you work at Dropbox

 

[kingtj1971]

I've been using DropBox for eons to sync about 800K files between three machines and had all of these issues. Sometimes I'd have to switch DropBox off if I was doing things that touched a huge number of files at a time.

A few months ago I finally bought a Synology NAS and have been using Synology Drive as a DropBox replacement. It's definitely a little less turn-key to setup, but my experience has been pretty smooth transitioning and it's a lot less of a resource hog. I find myself not thinking about sync processes anymore at all, and I have more storage on tap now for cold data in another volume.

A lot more money up front, but I'm out of the monthly/yearly subscription fee thing at least until I need a hardware upgrade.

You lack the off-site nature of stuff stored up in the cloud if you're relying on that dimension of things for backups, but that may be a positive depending on your outlook these days. I may just be getting old and curmudgeonly, but I'm swinging back towards that paranoid notion of liking my data inside my own four walls.

Nope... I've become increasingly "anti cloud", the more I have to use it in the workplace and support our users with those solutions. The fact it gives you an "off site" location for your data is really the only value it adds. And IMO - that's a double-edged sword. Put enough content up in the cloud and then try to do a full recovery if you lose everything due to some on-site disaster. See how "fun" that process is!

I run my own server with a second server backing up all the contents of the first one with versioning. And if I need off-site storage for disaster recovery purposes? I just selectively upload copies of specific files or folders of the most importance and only pay the minimum needed for a service to keep that (doesn't matter much if it's Apple, Box, DropBox, Microsoft or someone else, as any of them go to data centers somewhere).

You could also go "old school" and just back up everything, every so often, onto tape or burn it to Blu-Ray disc and store those off site someplace for safe-keeping.

 

[kingtj1971]

So if I throw my macbook pro off my yacht and its lost in the ocean forever then Dropbox's servers know this and deletes everything??? But in all seriousness I thought that having a dropbox folder set up; then any files in that folder are on my local device AND on dropbox. If my local device vanishes - then surely, without some kind of trigger, the remote dropbox copies would not be lost, right?

I think what they meant about "sync is no sort of backup" is the caution that if you accidentally delete a file or folders, or something gets corrupted, the synced cloud copy will duplicate that deletion or corruption.

That's, of course, not *strictly* true anymore with services like DropBox offering an ability to go back to previous versions and restore deleted files from the cloud within at least a 1 month time window or so. But still - things you didn't know were gone until too late are a problem. With a real backup solution, you could pull out a full backup made a year or more ago and restore it.

 

[agregson]

I have 2tb iCloud and same on Google and Dropbox. Don’t use clients with latter two and just use transmit which works well. Store videos and transcodes of my own collection in Google as infuse can play directly. Store backups as encrypted DMG in Dropbox. Use folders on all 3 to sync between my iMac, 2 minis, iPad and iPhone. All works well.

Folder sharing works well from all. Or use iCloud almost exclusively for sharing files and folders with others. Super.

I like the transmit route as I have no client and works well. I would like finder integration but not critical.

I would move to all iCloud if it would work with infuse and also allowed cloud only storage with no option to local sync. I wish they had an option for cloud only folder. I’m on 1Gbps connection so even on demand download is quite transparent if an app accessed it.

Am I missing something with iCloud?

No real desire to continue Dropbox and Google drive but for cost they work out ok and take hassle and cost out of local devices, replacement, replication, management, DR and so on.

 

[Digitalguy]

As other have said, while I hate Dropbox as a company, they are clearly the best in the business for work, especially if you have many devices with different OSs (Windows, MacOS, Android, iPadOS).
I also have Ondrive for business for free from my work, with 5TB of storage (vs 1TB for the regular paid version), but I only use it as a backup for large files, like my 2TB movie collection that makes up my Plex server, or my hundreds of GB of music libraries etc.
Dropbox is much, much faster and more reliable, and allows me to have instantly my files on all my devices (export to one device and have it immediately on another). Every second matters when you have strict deadlines to meet.
I have tried virtually every big cloud service, each has advantages and disadvantages, including things that Dropbox lacks, but none is even close to the mix of speed, reliability and level of integration in all the major platforms that Dropbox has. It's unfortunately because they are one of the worst companies.
As for native support, I don't think it will come until Apple announces a date for the end of Rosetta support (same for the other cloud platforms, which require more work than standard apps to make into Universal apps).