A Better Dropbox app

Software
1

Huge thanks to @MereCivilian for pointing me to maestral:

It’s the Dropbox app that I’ve always wanted:

  1. Focused on syncing stuff, not everything else that Dropbox now wants to do.

  2. Better info in the menu bar (actually useful! Better list of recently sync’d files!)

  3. A command-line tool that lets you check status, pause & resume, and more.

  4. Native on Apple Silicon

  5. Uses two processes instead of a dozen (or more)

  6. No kernel extension

  7. Updates via Sparkle, not some weird, hidden, impossible to stop self-updater like the official Dropbox app

I’m sure there are downsides (@MereCivilian mentions that it doesn’t let you control shared folders, but I can do that on the website).

It does Selective Sync but doesn’t do the ‘Smart Sync’ thing where there are placeholder files that can be downloaded on demand. I lost that feature when I let my pro subscription expire anyway.

I’m much happier with this app already, and figured others might want to know about it too. I had heard about it but had never tried it until @MereCivilian suggested it, and now I wish I had switched a long time ago!

7 Likes
2

Thanks, TJ. Any idea how it does with Scrivener projects? As I recall, the developer said that Scrivener’s package-based file format can be a bit wonky with certain sync services.

3

Finally installed this. Nice app. I don’t want everything synced, just a few convenient folders. The weight and annoyance of Dropbox on my system was keeping me from doing it, but for 88MB and barely any latent CPU usage? No problem. :slight_smile:

4

Great find! Is there an alternative client to Google’s cloud service? I could switch to Dropbox if I really had to, but I’d rather not…

5

No clue, as I don’t use Scrivener… but it seems to sync things just the same as the original app, but those packages are tricky beasts, so use at your own risk.

1 Like
6

Looks good, and very well documented.
This may be a solution to the
Dropbox (Long Ass University Name)
Dropbox (Personal)
folder naming that I despise and that breaks scripts.

7

I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks and, after a few initial bumps in the road, it’s working well. I like the options in the menubar dropdown. The main reason I tried it was that Dropbox sync was eating a bunch of memory. Maestral seems to have taken care of that. I did uninstall the Dropbox app so there’s no chance of that starting up again.

3 Likes
8

There’s Insync, which works with Google (and now Dropbox actually).

1 Like