Put Documents, Downloads etc inside Dropbox?

[thecounthahaha]

Hi,

I'm an avid dropbox user and although my partner uses it too, she's not as thorough with keeping everything in the dropbox folder that needs to be, which has caused a few issues in the past. Now that dropbox has upgraded the size of her pro account to 1tb, and her internal SSD is 960gb, I thought that trying to get as much of her work synched as possible might be a good idea.

Folders like the desktop, download folders and documents folder that come standard were my first thoughts. Possibly even her music, videos and photos?

Is this possible? I realise we can create new folders, but that would involve being savvy with keeping everything up to date. Her downloads folder is packed full things as it is and I'm not sure she'd remember to move things across.

I've wondered whether symlinks are the way to go but haven't tried anything yet.

PS, there's the chance of her being able to use a smaller 500gb Air for work purposes, which would be great if their download folders etc could stay synched so it doesn't really matter what computer she's on. Is that possible?

Thanks very much!

 

[Weaselboy]

I've wondered whether symlinks are the way to go but haven't tried anything yet.

Yep... symlink is the way to go. I have my ~/Documents folder symlinked to DB and it works perfectly.

Just run this command in Terminal to make the link.

ln -s ~/Documents ~/Dropbox/Documents

Or if you are not comfortable in Terminal you can use the free app MacDropAny to make your symlinks.

Be careful about t doing this iTunes and iPhoto libraries though. I know some of these sins services don't fully support all the metadata and resource forks that OS X uses in the library package files and it can cause problems. It has been a while since I looked, but I think I recall seeing posts in the DB forums about issues with the iPhoto library.

 

[thecounthahaha]

Thanks!

They don't seem to have the ticks and syncing icons though, I guess this is because they aren't technically in the dropbox folder? is there a way of changing that?

Thanks again,

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks!

They don't seem to have the ticks and syncing icons though, I guess this is because they aren't technically in the dropbox folder? is there a way of changing that?

Thanks again,

No they won't have that because like you mentioned the files are not really in the folder.

 

[thecounthahaha]

That's a shame. I've got the Dowloads folder working well using macdropany - thanks!


In the past I've created a folder inside dropbox and then put the symlink outside, so that I can see the ticks - I've given it a go to no avail so I guess that it isn't possible with the main folders?

Thanks,

 

[Weaselboy]

That's a shame. I've got the Dowloads folder working well using macdropany - thanks!


In the past I've created a folder inside dropbox and then put the symlink outside, so that I can see the ticks - I've given it a go to no avail so I guess that it isn't possible with the main folders?

Thanks,

That would work because you actually put a folder there, but the symlink is not really a folder so you aren't going to see the animation.

 

[thecounthahaha]

Cool, however the main issue there is you cannot move the Documents/Desktop/Movies/Downloads etc folders from where they are originally located.

Nevermind! The symlink way seems to work pretty well, its just a shame about the ticks missing.

Thanks again,