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Asked: 2020-07-31 06:35:37 +0800 CST

Dropbox Smart Sync 18.04 LTS

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I have upgraded Dropbox (Personal) to Dropbox (Personal Plus) which provides 2TB of (paid) cloud storage.

Clearly, with that amount of potential storage, syncing to the local drive will be an issue but Dropbox provides a solution with Smart Sync.

The current version of Dropbox from the Ubuntu Software Center installed is:

enter image description here

confirmed by Synaptic (although the app itself suggests v102.4.431 on 18.04 LTS) but this version does not provide the option to make use of Smart Sync, only Selective Sync. The difference between the two options is simply that with Selective, files/folders are not shown in the local synced Dropbox folder but with Smart Sync, a (best described as) token is placed in the local folder from which the file in the cloud can be opened making the whole process seamless.

In synaptic it shows that Python 3 version is available:

enter image description here

Will this version provide Smart Sync or is there another way of implementing this feature?

Further research shows that there is a downloadable .deb for Ubuntu from Dropbox but it is not clear from the description whether this is a more up to date version than the one already installed (which will provide the functionability required). Is there wisdom in installing this deb package using this resource and what will happen to the existing installation?

Note: these packages install an open-source helper application. The version of this application does not change as frequently as the main Dropbox application. These packages will always install the latest version of Dropbox for Linux.

nautilus dropbox 18.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In spite of information initially to the contrary when upgrading the Dropbox Personal (free) account to Personal (Plus) the Smart Sync feature is not available for Linux (and thus Ubuntu).

    quote from Dropbox support:

    If I understand correctly, you would like to be able to use Smart Sync on your Linux device, is this correct?

    There are some things that it is not possible to use when using the Dropbox client on Linux.

    These are as follows:

    Camera Uploads
Screenshot Uploads
Two Accounts
Custom Folder Icons for Shared Folders
Smart Sync
New Dropbox Desktop App

    I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

    In other ways Dropbox integrates extremely well with Ubuntu and it is a shame that the new and more able features are not available but hopefully, this question will assist any other user thinking along the lines of upgrading their account to Personal (Plus) or Professional.

    To their credit, Dropbox have immediately refunded the upgrade fee without any question, returning the account to it's free status without any data loss and I do not hesitate in continuing to recommend the usefulness of Dropbox for cloud storage.

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