1. Dropbox App For Mac
2. Download Dropbox Sync

Dropbox is an internet based file hosting and sharing service which allows users to store files and folders on the Internet. What is special about Dropbox is its ability to synchronize documents across multiple computers and devices, and it does so in a very clever way: when you add or change a document in the “Dropbox” folder on your computer, the changes will immediately be synchronized with the server on the Internet. Similarly, when changes are made on the server, they are immediately synchronized to your computer. This happens almost instantly, within just a couple of moments.

Once set up, Notebooks’ Dropbox sync can take place in the background and hardly requires your attention any more.

Setup

Setting up Dropbox synchronization in Notebooks takes just a few moments:

• In Notebooks’ Settings > Sync > Dropbox turn on Dropbox Sync
• Open Dropbox Settings and log in to Dropbox; you may be temporarily transferred to the Dropbox application if you have that installed. This is for safety reasons and to make sure that Notebooks never gets your username and password.
  If you do not yet have a Dropbox account, you can use this referral link, which will give you extra 500MB of free space.
• By default, Notebooks uses the folder Notebooks at the top level of your Dropbox to store its books and documents, but you can select any other folder on Dropbox as well.

There are a number of different ways to transfer files from Mac to Mac or share them, depending on the tools you use to work on the file. The most straightforward is to use some form of cloud syncing. That could be via iCloud — Apple’s own apps use iCloud to sync between Macs and iOS devices logged into the same Apple ID — or, say, Dropbox.

Sync your Primary vault with Dropbox. If you’re opening 1Password for the first time, choose the option to sync with Dropbox and follow the onscreen instructions. If you’ve already set up 1Password: Open and unlock 1Password. Tap Settings Sync Primary, then tap Start Syncing. Tap Sync with Dropbox. Safely store and share your photos, videos, files and more in the cloud. Your first 15 GB of storage are free with a Google account. On a Mac, double-click on the Dropbox.app icon, then click on the Open button. Set up the Dropbox application. When the installation is complete, you should see the Set Up Dropbox dialog box. Enter your Davidson email address but do NOT type in a password.

With these few steps you are ready to start syncing. For automatic sync, please read on.

Manual Synchronization

After activating Dropbox sync, the action menu of each book shows a new option Sync – Dropbox. Select it to sync the contents of the current book – its documents and all of its sub books – with the corresponding folder on Dropbox (by default, it is the folder Notebooks at the root level of your Dropbox account).

Dropbox App For Mac

If you have the Dropbox applicationinstalled on your computer, the files uploaded by Notebooks will appear in your local Dropbox folder a few seconds later. You can make additions and changes to the documents in your computer’s Dropbox folder, and these modifications will be synced to Dropbox and on to Notebooks on your other devices.

Manual synchronization is deep and syncs the current book and all of its sub books.

Automatic Synchronization with Delta Sync

To make synchronization more comfortable, Notebooks can automatically connect to Dropbox at regular intervals, detect changes and initiate a sync when necessary. We call this sync method delta sync. Automatic synchronization is made active by turning on the corresponding switch in Notebooks’ settings.

To initialize delta sync, perform a manual sync from Notebooks’ top level first. When finished, delta sync is set up.

Background Refresh

While you are working in another app or not using the device at all, iOS wakes up Notebooks at irregular intervals, allows it to perform a delta sync and import any changes you may have made on other devices in the meantime. So as you are working in Notebooks on your Mac, for example, Notebooks on your iPad silently imports your changes and updates its contents. When you then open Notebooks on your iPad, your changes are already there.

It is important to know that iOS controls when and how often it wakes up Notebooks, and it does so based on your usage pattern. So the more often you use Notebooks, the more often it is allowed to refresh in the background.

If you want to ensure that Notebooks is in sync because you are about to leave for a meeting, for example, just open Notebooks with auto sync enabled and it will immediately perform a delta sync (provided you have online access). A few moments later its contents is up to date and you can leave.

Activate background refresh

To take advantage of background refresh, please make sure that

1. Automatic Synchronization is turned in in Notebooks’ settings
2. Background App Refresh is enabled for your device and for Notebooks in iOS settings.

Trigger Delta Sync Manually

If you prefer to stay in control and decide when Notebooks should sync your documents, you can turn off automatic sync and use the pull-to-sync gesture in any book to trigger a delta sync. Delta sync needs to be initialized, though.

For more details, please refer to our handbook.

FAQ

Notebooks can automatically synchronize with Dropbox, which hugely improves user experience. Here is some background information and a few tips.

• When made active, Notebooks auto sync (we call it delta sync) regularly checks Dropbox for changes and imports them.
• This delta sync looks at the whole Notebooks hierarchy on Dropbox, not just he current book. So even if a change was detected in some nested book, it is synced.
• To initialize delta sync, perform a manual sync from Notebooks' top level (pull down the list of books and documents until a progress indicator appears; release the list, and allow Notebooks to perform a full sync).
• Automatic sync takes place when you open Notebooks and when you close it, but also every 60 seconds while you are using it.
• If your device supports background refresh and you have enabled it for Notebooks, auto sync takes place even while your device is sleeping or you are using another app.
• When auto sync is not active, you can use the 'pull to sync' gesture (pull down the list of books and documents) to trigger a delta sync.
• Changes you make in Notebooks are exported immediately or during the next delta sync.
• Delta sync tries to not interfere with your work. You can continue creating or editing documents while the sync is taking place, except when you are trying to edit a document that Notebooks is about to sync.
• When you turn off autos sync or don't have an internet connection, Notebooks remembers what you do change and syncs these documents during the next delta sync.
• Protected items are exported only when Notebooks is unlocked, but they are imported even when Notebooks is locked.
• You can selectively disable synchronization for specific books or documents. These items will never be synced.
• If Notebooks reports a timeout during sync, just retry.

If you are looking for a way to share some of your Notebooks documents with other users, you can achieve that with a shared Dropbox folder and Dropbox sync. Here is what can you do:

• Create and share a Dropbox folder which currently is not in Notebooks' hierarchy (Dropbox does not allow that).
• Then on your computer, create a symbolic link from that shared folder into a folder within Notebooks' hierarchy, as described at http://www.dropboxwiki.com/Sync_Other_Folders.
  The shared folder now appears in two locations.
• To Notebooks, this linked folder looks like a regular folder, so it syncs it like a regular folder, in both directions as usual. All changes you make in Notebooks appear in the original shared folder on Dropbox, too, and are available for all invited users.

Iphone app mac contact app notes. Important: On a Mac, please make sure that the shared folder is not on iCloud Drive, because that does not play well with Dropbox.

As mentioned in several sections, there is a set of characters that should be avoided in the titles of documents, especially when syncing with Dropbox. While iOS and macOS handle all these characters well, they will cause problems once synced to a Windows computer.

The characters incompatible with Windows are < > : ” / ? *

You can read more about this on the Dropbox website.

If you want to use Notebooks on an iPad, and iPhone and maybe a Mac or a PC as well, it is important to know how synchronize your documents between those devices so you can access them everywhere. Notebooks offers multiple options which are summarized in a dedicated blog entry.

Notebooks allows you to selectively disable Dropbox sync for books or individual documents. You exclude an item from sync by turning off the Sync Dropbox switch in its info.

A possible scenario is when you have a huge collection of documents on Dropbox which you do not want to have in Notebooks on your iPad or iPhone. The best way to achieve that is this:

• Disable automatic Dropbox sync in Notebooks.
• Create a book in the location and with the title of the Dropbox folder you do not want to sync.
• Open the book's info and turn off Sync Dropbox.
• Now you can enable Dropbox sync again.

From now on, manual and automatic Dropbox sync will ignore this book and its contents.

Notebooks' system files (plist files) ensure that all books and documents appear identical on all devices. The files include metadata like selected font and document style, color label, custom sort order, assigned tags and much more. Notebooks never shows them, but when synced to your computer these files show up in Finder or in Windows Explorer.

If you don't want to see these files on your hard drive, and if you do not mind that your books and documents may look different on each device, you can turn off 'Sync System Files' in Notebooks' sync settings, and Notebooks will no longer export them. - A few essential files like those for Notebooks' task lists will be exported anyway.

A few months ago, Dropbox introduced a device limit for their free accounts. Users may only link up to three devices with their Dropbox account at any time. At first glance one might think that Notebooks users are now limited syncing their documents to three devices, but fortunately, this is not the case.

The device limit is restricted to the Dropbox app. Third party apps which implement their own sync interface do not count, and Notebooks on iOS is one of these other apps.

So that means you can use and sync Notebooks on up to three Macs or PCs (they need Dropbox' app for automatic sync), but you can use Notebooks on as many iPads, iPhones and iPods as you want.

There are plenty of reasons to put things into the cloud, be it as a backup or to access them remotely from other devices. But putting things into the cloud can be a hassle — Apple's trying to make it a little more seamless with iCloud but if you're old school like me, that seamlessness just doesn't do it for you. There's something about having all my computer's files neatly organized and accessible that soothes my more obsessive tendencies.

At the same time, I want to be able to access my important files while I'm on the go, and I want to know that they're backed up in case catastrophe strikes. That's where the cloud really comes in. I've got a local Time Machine backup running (two, actually) and I use Backblaze for nightly backups to the cloud, and though I can use Backblaze to access files from my iPhone, it's just terribly slow.

Enter Dropbox

Dropbox, on the other hand, is blazing fast. Uploads and downloads sling through the web as fast as my connection can handle. I can open the Dropbox app on my iPhone or iPad and get to all the files in there with ease and speed. But there were two basic options for backing up my files to Dropbox: either copy them over regularly, or just move them onto Dropbox (oh, the humanity).

Turns out, there's another way, one in which you can keep your folders and files right where they are and have them backed up and synced with Dropbox. It all works through the magic of symbolic links.

How does this work?

You might be familiar with alias links on your Mac — it creates a shortcut that points to another file, open the shortcut and it opens that file. A symbolic link is similar, except that instead of creating a pointer it creates a redirect. Whatever you do with the symbolic link (or symlink) is applied to the linked file.

Dropbox works by creating a folder on your computer that is synced with their servers. Place a file in that folder and it's synced to the cloud. Upload a file from a Dropbox app or their web interface and it'll be downloaded onto your computer. Basically, that's it. Thing is, if you want to back up files to Dropbox, copying them into that folder means they're taking up space twice on your hard drive, and just moving them to Dropbox takes them right out of your organizational flow.

Put a tiny symlink into Dropbox and it can back up an entire folder elsewhere on your computer

If you were to create an alias to a file and put that in the Dropbox folder, only the alias would get backed up, and that's not terribly useful. But if you put a symlink into the Dropbox folder, when the Dropbox backup app looks at it it's redirected to the linked file, and it backs that up instead. So with one 25-byte symlink you can back up gigabytes upon gigabytes of data without duplicating it on your computer.

The additional benefit is that you can sync and back up entire directories that would be otherwise difficult to move. You can put your Pictures folder into Dropbox with a symlink or your entire Documents folder. Heck, you could even sync and back up your Mac's desktop files and installed apps.

This sounds too good to be true…

There are some caveats to note here. The first is cost: Dropbox does offer a free tier, and it's a paltry 2GB. That might be enough for you, but chances are if you're planning on putting an entire folder like Documents in there you'll need more space. Thankfully, Dropbox isn't terribly expensive, offering 1TB of storage for $9.99/month. Chances are you'd be able to back up your entire computer onto that if you really wanted to.

There are risks that come with putting your files into the cloud, of course, and they come down to you to manage them. Make sure you have a strong and unique Dropbox password and use pin or Touch ID security in the mobile apps when available.

If you change a file on your phone or with Dropbox on the web, that file will be synced down to your computer, and vice versa.

The biggest risk you run, however, is inherent to Dropbox itself: any changes made to a file in Dropbox are synced to all devices linked to that account. So if you change a file from your phone, that file is saved on the server and synced down to your computer with those changes. If you delete a file from the web interface, it's deleted from your computer. And vice versa. Dropbox does offer paying customers 30 days of stored historical versions and backups of deleted files, but it's still worth noting the risks of what you're wading into here.

Download Dropbox Sync

Those risks are minor, though. Set and practice good security and be conscious of what you're doing with your files and you'll be in good shape — and your files will be there for you whenever and wherever you need them.

How to sync folders on your Mac to Dropbox

1. Download and install the Dropbox app from the Dropbox website (download will start automatically).
2. Once you've got the Dropbox app up and running, open Terminal.
3. Navigate in Terminal to your Dropbox folder by typing cd /Users/YourMacUsernameHere/Dropbox and then hitting return. A new line in Terminal will appear that's Your-Computer-Name:Dropbox YourUserName$
4. Create your symbolic link by typing ln -s ~/FolderNameHere and hitting return. A folder will appear in your Dropbox folder with the alias/shortcut arrow and it will immediately begin uploading.
   
   • To create a symlink to your Desktop, type ln -s ~/Desktop
   • To create a symlink to your Documents folder, type ln -s ~/Documents
   • To create a symlink to any other folder or file, simply type its file path after ln -s ~/FilePathGoesHere — this is useful for if you want to back up most your Documents folder, but not necessarily everything in there (for instance, a 30GB Windows virtual machine from Parallels).
   • To create a symlink to a folder or file with a space in its name, put a backslash before the space, like so: ln -s ~/Documents/Star Trek Aldrin
5. Dropbox will start uploading your symlinked folders.

Now what?

Now you go about using your Mac like you normally would. Any time you edit or create a file in one of your symlinked folders, it'll be automatically uploaded to Dropbox. Any time you remotely edit one of those files, it will be synced back down to your Mac. It's the magic of the cloud.

Advanced: Sync files with another Mac!

This isn't just a handy cloud back-up and storage tool — you can also use Dropbox to sync files between multiple Macs. Yeah, crazy, we know. Just imagine stepping away from your iMac and opening your MacBook at the coffee shop to have all of your important files, even your desktop, synced right over. Here's how to make that a reality:

1. Get your folder(s) set up on your primary computer as instructed above.
2. Install and set up Dropbox on your second computer. It will start to download the folder that you symlinked and uploaded from your primary computer.
3. Wait for both computers to finish syncing. See that little syncing icon on the Dropbox menu bar icon? That means that Dropbox is still syncing. You want just the open box Dropbox icon, no little sync icon. Seriously. Wait for the sync to finish.
4. Once the folder is fully downloaded, quit Dropbox on the secondary computer. Seriously, quit Dropbox.
   1. Click on Dropbox in the menu bar.
   2. Click on the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the Dropbox menu.
   3. Click on Quit Dropbox.
5. On the secondary computer, open the Dropbox folder.
6. On the secondary computer,drag your synced folder out of the Dropbox folder and into the location where you want it to be. In the case of Documents or Desktop, you'll be replacing an existing folder in your user folder (get to that by opening Documents or Applications and hitting cmd + up arrow).
7. On the secondary computer, open Terminal and navigate to your Dropbox folder by typing cd /Users/YourMacUsernameHere/Dropbox and then hitting return.
8. On the secondary computer, create a symlink to the folder you dragged out of Dropbox by typing ln -s ~/FolderNameHere and hitting return.
9. Double check that both the primary and secondary computers have identically-named symlink files in the exact same Dropbox folder locations.
10. Re-start Dropbox on the secondary computer (it's in Applications) and give it a moment to sync. If all has gone well, there won't be anything to sync since both folders are identical.

And that's it. Now when you change a file in your symlinked folder on one computer, it will be uploaded to Dropbox and immediately downloaded onto the other computer. Voilà, you're in sync.

Any questions?

Let us know in the comments!

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