4 ms·
FFS. I haven't enjoyed Dropbox since they disallowed symlinks. For many years I kept my home directory stock and created symlinks within Dropbox for Music, Pict
by shortcake27 4y ago
FFS. I haven't enjoyed Dropbox since they disallowed symlinks. For many years I kept my home directory stock and created symlinks within Dropbox for Music, Pictures, and Documents etc. Then for some reason they actively prevented symlinks, so I swapped it around and moved the directories into Dropbox and symlinked from my home directory. This broke icons in Finder sidebar with no way to fix. It also breaks navigation in Finder, eg go into ~/Pictures and go back up and you're in ~/Dropbox, not home. I hate it. Now, the path is going to get even worse and my real directory for Pictures will be something like "~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Pictures" instead of "~/Pictures".
I was excited when they announced Dropbox backup, I gave it a shot and it just did the exact same thing - it moved the real directories into an obscure location within ~/Dropbox and created symlinks in the home directory .
It is genuinely amazing how Dropbox worked better for me 10 years ago than it does today. But I've been scared to move off Dropbox because of how reliable it is. I tried Google Drive a while ago and it was extremely buggy, all my files got duplicated, and I had no trust in the service. Wouldn't go with Google for other reasons these days. I was considering Sync last year, think I'm going to bite the bullet and give it a go.
- jamesgeck0 4y agoAll cloud file sync services on macOS are ultimately going to have similar issues unless Apple dramatically improves the API they're forcing everyone to use.
- shortcake27 4y agoYeah good point, I just read the other comments where many other cloud sync services have regressed too.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Groxx 4y agoAs a user of both a recent OSX and an M1, and using multiple other syncing services: nah. Others are doing just fine. Dropbox is likely being pig-headed about something, forcing them into this awful corner, and they're loudly blaming Apple for it (partially justifiably, partially "if it hurts when you do that, don't do that"). My guess is it's the transparently download when accessed files, due to losing a lot of kext abilities through the years. Apple hasn't blocked applications from changing files or using file notification events, so "normal" syncing things are still running just fine.
- azinman2 4y agoIt does seem we went backward with Dropbox. I think part of it is the whole file sync thing where you save space by not having a perfect mirror and all your documents. Making it more dynamic and cloud based might be good for storage, but it ends up with a ton of trade offs.
- baby 4y agoKnowing how complicated syncing multiple is I would stir away as far as I could from symlinking. It sounds like a sure way to brick your dropbox
- shortcake27 4y agoDropbox claimed the same thing when they banned them, yet myself and hundreds of other people had symlinks in our Dropbox for years without any problems. In fact I never heard of a problem with symlinks in Dropbox. Anyway, symlinks in Dropbox were banned years ago. So now Dropbox contains the real directories, and I have symlinks in my home directory. I don’t see how this could go wrong. Also, this is how Dropbox implements their own Computer backup feature.
- baby 4y agoI had huge issues using git repos in dropbox, so there’s that :(