Cloud Drive For Dropbox

  If you have a lot of files inside the web version of your Dropbox account, you may not want all of it cluttering up your computer. Especially if you have limited space on your hard drive. Therefore if you have files which are not strictly needed right now on your computer, you can use something called   Selective Sync . This tells Dropbox to remove that certain folder from the computer but still keep it in the web version of Dropbox. If you have Dropbox installed on multiple computers, you can have different Selective Sync settings on each device, depending on your needs and hard drive space. To use the feature, right-click on the Dropbox icon in your system tray and go to Preferences. Under the Sync tab is the  Selective Sync  option. If you click the button, your Dropbox folders will show. Untick the folders you want to remove from the computer and click  Update . Now watch the folder disappear from the computer. Please note that you can only remove folders,...

  When you are in the Dropbox folder on your computer, right-clicking on a file brings up several Dropbox-related options: Share, Copy Dropbox link, View on Dropbox.com, Version History, and View Comments. Clicking  Share  enables you to set a sharing link and to enter the email address of the person you want to send the link to. Alternatively, you can click the option to copy the link to your clipboard. This way, you can send the link via text message, chat message, whatever.

  Legal download websites, such as   Project Gutenberg , now allow you to link to your cloud storage account. That way, when you want to download a book, it can be sent directly to your account on Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Simply choose the book you want, and you will see the cloud storage icons on the right-hand side. Choose your preferred service and you will be asked to authorize the site to access your Dropbox account.

  As file sizes for email attachments are still restricted to around 25MB, one way around it is to put the file into cloud storage and link to it inside the email. Then the recipient merely has to click on the cloud storage link to download the file. Enter  Dropbox For Gmail.  To get this free Gmail add-on, click the “+” button in the right-hand sidebar of the new Gmail. When the Google Apps Suite box comes up, search for Dropbox. A couple of clicks later, it will be added. Now refresh your Gmail page to see it up and running. Now when you are composing an email to someone, you will see a small Dropbox icon among the options. Clicking that gets you into your files. Choose which one you want to send, and you’re off to the races.

  This is one I don’t really use that much since I already have my trusty go-to screenshot app – SnagIt. However, some of you may like to use the screenshot sharing function in Dropbox. It doesn’t make screenshots, however. It only puts your screenshots into a Dropbox folder and automatically makes Dropbox sharing links so others can download them. In the Dropbox settings is the option for sharing screenshots. Now when you make a screenshot (say with CMD + SHIFT + 4 on your MacOS), the screenshot will go into a “screenshots” folder in your Dropbox. A sharing link will then be automatically generated and copied to your clipboard.

  Remember at the start when I told you about Selective Sync? Well, under that same   Sync   tab is the default location of the Dropbox folder on your computer. Generally, Windows and MacOS put the Dropbox folder in a really stupid inconvenient place. Whereas I like to have a Cloud Storage folder on the computer, and in there have the default folders for Dropbox, Google Drive, Sync, etc. It annoys me no end that OneDrive can’t be moved. If you want to easily move your Dropbox folder to another place on your computer, click the  Move  button under  Dropbox folder location . Choose your new location and the folder will move over along with all of the folder’s contents.

  In places like your computer settings and browser settings, you are asked to specify a default location for saving files. I have a “Downloads” folder where everything gets thrown into, but instead, why not specify a Dropbox folder? That way, everything you download will get synced across computers. The only downside to this is making sure you have enough Dropbox space if you are in the habit of downloading big files

One of the downsides of cloud storage is that (as yet) they do not offer encryption. The one exception is Sync, which I also use and which is great. But Dropbox doesn’t offer any file encryption. Until they do, a good alternative is  BoxCryptor . With a limited free version and two paid versions, BoxCryptor makes a virtual drive on your computer which becomes your new Dropbox folder. When you drag a file into the folder, you can specify whether or not it should be encrypted before it is sent to the Dropbox server.