{"id":11925,"date":"2023-04-24T05:21:39","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T12:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.coretechnologies.com\/blog\/?p=11925"},"modified":"2023-04-24T05:21:39","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T12:21:39","slug":"dropbox-selective-sync","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coretechnologies.com\/blog\/alwaysup\/dropbox-selective-sync\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Does AlwaysUp Support Dropbox Selective Sync?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Does<\/div>\n
\n  I’m considering using your AlwaysUp app to start Dropbox automatically<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I understand that AlwaysUp doesn\u2019t work with Smart Sync<\/a> but does it work with Selective Sync<\/a>? How does that function?<\/p>\n

We only want to have half of our Dropbox folders syncing.<\/p>\n

— Adam<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hi Adam.<\/p>\n

To answer your question, AlwaysUp works well with Dropbox Selective Sync. <\/p>\n

Indeed, we have many customers using that feature. And our test installations on Windows 11, 10 and Server 2022 all rely on Selective Sync to block out huge files.<\/p>\n

Note that when you use Selective Sync, your PC won’t have access to the files and folders you’ve excluded. But that’s exactly what you want, right?<\/p>\n

Anyway, let’s dig into the details.<\/p>\n

What is Dropbox Selective Sync?<\/h2>\n

Selective Sync allows Dropbox a user to avoid downloading all files from Dropbox.com onto their PC. <\/p>\n

You can find Selective Sync in the Preferences window (available from the Dropbox tray icon):<\/p>\n

\"Dropbox<\/a><\/div>\n

Click the Select folders<\/b> button and choose the directories to be downloaded from the cloud:<\/p>\n

\"Dropbox<\/a><\/div>\n

And once you’ve made your selection, Dropbox will respect it. Any folder you un-checked will not show up on your PC.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to see that you can use Selective Sync to moderate how much hard drive space Dropbox consumes. For example, if you have a huge folder of videos that you never intend to play on your computer, simply un-check the folder in Selective Sync to avoid the videos wasting precious gigabytes on your hard drive.<\/p>\n

Very straightforward.<\/p>\n

So that’s Selective Sync. To avoid confusion, let’s briefly touch on the other space-saving feature with a similar name.<\/p>\n

How is Selective Sync different from Smart Sync?<\/h2>\n

Dropbox Plus and Professional customers who don’t want to download every file from the cloud can also use Smart Sync<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Smart Sync active, Dropbox delays downloading each file to your computer until you need it. The effect is that a file takes up practically no space at all until you first access it.<\/p>\n

The effect is very similar to Selective Sync: some files are not downloaded to your computer, thereby saving hard drive space. However, there is one key difference:<\/p>\n

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