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Camera Upload Not Syncing New Photos on Iphone

I have Dropbox installed on my computer, and when I plug in my phone I get the message, "No new images or videos were found on Ashley's iPhone" when in fact there are lots of new images and videos for Dropbox to add to my Camera Upload folder. All my settings are correct on my computer to take the files from my phone and add them to Dropbox, I have enough room in my Dropbox account, I can't seem to figure out why it just hasn't downloaded any new images since March.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks, Ashley

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Zed

Hello everyone,

In order to fix Camera Uploads for your devices please make sure you have tried the following:

1) Install the latest Dropbox app on your device.

2) Enable / Reset Camera Uploads on your computer

Mac

Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar at the top of the screen and then click on the gear in the Notifications panel
Choose "Preferences".
Go to the "Import" tab.
Uncheck and check again "Enable camera uploads for".

Windows

Click the Dropbox icon in the system tray at the bottom right of your screen and then click on the gear in the Notifications panel.
Select "Preferences".
In the window that appears, click on "Change AutoPlay Settings".
In the AutoPlay settings, scroll down and choose the camera you want to change settings for. It will likely have "Import pictures and video using Dropbox" as the default.
Click on the drop-down menu and choose "Ask me every time" or choose a different application for importing.

This will reset your Camera Uploads settings for all your devices. When you connect a device, Dropbox will ask you if you want to import pictures from it.

Note:

Android devices: Select Connect as a Disk Drive from the status bar
iOS devices: Unlock the device to allow camera uploads to continue

3) Enable / Reset Camera Uploads on your mobile device

iOS

- Open the Dropbox app, go to the “Recents” tab and tap the gear icon
- Under the Settings heading, select Camera Uploads
- You can enable or disable the automatic camera uploads feature, as well as the option to allow the feature to use cellular data or not. Please note that videos will not be automatically uploaded over cellular data.

Android

- Open the Dropbox app
- Tap on the menu button
- Tap the gear icon
- Under Camera Upload, select “Turn on Camera Upload"

You can also read more about the camera uploads feature on the following page: https://help.dropbox.com/photos-videos/camera-uploads-overview

If you experience issues with the Camera Uploads feature, so that our support team can investigate more on this, please go to www.dropbox.com/support and submit a ticket request.

Thank you!

All comments

Arnd M.

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for posting your question on our forum.

Are you still having the same issues? Could I suggest installing Carousel on your iPhone. This application let's you automatically upload your photos to your Dropbox right after you've taken the photo. For more information on Carousel please take a look at: carousel.dropbox.com

Debra K.4

Same issue with no photo uploads since ios 8.4 update on my iphone:-( "Can't connect to Dropbox". Already tried to delete and reinstall dropbox app....frustrating I can't find an answer anywhere. I did not like the reviews for Carousel...any other fixes?

Simon R.27

Hi All

I have the same issue here also. Were there any solutions found?

Simon R.27

By the way I should add that the photo's are in both the iPhone library and Carousel App on the phone - just not uploaded.

Megan C.8

I have the same issue. My photos are not automatically syncing to Dropbox. I tried syncing and it says everything is up-to-date, but it isn't.

Peter M.72

Same issue here. I thought Dropbox was automatically uploading my photos. Today I looked carefully and found many many photos on my phone have never been uploaded to my pc. Now I am trying to find out how to do this manually with no luck.

Simon R.27

So how do we get a response form Dropbox - is there an official help forum or support ticket request?

Simon R.27

And as if by magic I turned backup on and off again (having done so a few times in the past) and its working!

Megan C.8

Here is the email I received from Dropbox support:

Thanks for contacting Dropbox! Sorry to hear you're experiencing this issue with your Camera Uploads.

If uploads from the Dropbox app appear stuck or slow, we’d recommend that you first try to reinstall our app, which will cancel the sync and clear the upload queue. When you sign in again, you can once again attempt to upload these files using our Camera Upload feature. Please note that if you have any favorited items, you will have to once again favorite and download any files that you’d previously favorited after reinstalling the app.

You can follow these steps to sign out and reinstall the app:

1. Open the Dropbox app, and select Settings
2. Under the Settings heading, disable the Camera Upload feature
3. Sign out of your Personal Dropbox account
4. Delete the Dropbox app from your device
5. From the App Store, download the latest version of the Dropbox app
6. After Dropbox has finished downloading, open the app and sign back into your Dropbox account

After following these steps, the upload queue will be cleared, and you can turn Camera Upload back on.

If this fails to resolve your issue -

1) You can try Dropbox's Carousel app (free in the App Store), as we've optimized the Camera Upload feature for that app. Automatic Backup from Carousel will still go into the Camera Uploads folder in your Dropbox.

2) You can plug your device into a computer to quickly upload remaining items.

To enable Camera Upload from the desktop client, please follow these steps:

- Make sure you have the most recent version of the desktop client installed. You can download it here: https://dropbox.com/install
- Click the small Dropbox icon in your menu bar/system tray.
- Click the gear in the Notifications pane.
- Select Preferences and click on the “import” tab.
- Check the box that says “Enable camera uploads.” You can set it to upload only photos, or both photos and videos.

Finally, it's important to note that if you're uploading a large queue of items or long videos, you'll likely want to make sure background uploading is enabled.

In order to enable background uploading for the Camera Upload feature, the app needs permission to access your device's location services and does not collect your location information.

With background uploading enabled, the app will automatically resume unfinished uploads when it detects a change to a location that you have previously uploaded to with Camera Upload (Wi-Fi only). If uploading using cellular data is enabled, the app will resume when a significant location change is detected.

This feature is designed to make Camera Upload work more efficiently and uses a low-power option provided by Apple.

In order for the Dropbox mobile app to resume uploads in the background of the device, a change in location must be detected from where the device was previously uploading from using Camera Uploads. The location change is necessary to trigger the Background App Refresh feature to resume the Dropbox mobile app in the background. This change does not need to be as significant when connected to a WiFi network. When using cellular data, the change in location will likely need to be more significant in order to be detected by Location Services.

For more information, please see our Help Center article here:

https://help.dropbox.com/mobile/location-data

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Debra K.4

Megan, did that work?

Sandy T.9

Megan's directions worked for me!

vajda f.

I have Dropbox on my Macbook, and it automatically installs the new photos and videos from my iPhone, there's no problem with it, but I have the folder Camera Upload which is created by Dropbox and it's empty after any time I import photos. Where my photos have been saved, or where can I find them?

Help would be appreciated.
Thank you, Flora

Darshaun N.

Situation:

-Iphone will not sync with my computer (computer won't import photos)

-On a MAC El Capital 10.11.5

-Dropbox sync has always worked perfectly for me, but I changed sim cards then it just would not sync. It always said something like syncing, 3 minutes remaining (I would wait 30 minutes but nothing would happen).

I tried various suggestions but nothing would work. Finally I simply deleted the dropbox app off my iPhone, then immediately my computer was able to import all my photos.

I hope this simple solution works for others out there!

Simon F.12

I have been having this issue for months and it's driving me crazy. Today I worked out that it seems to be only videos that have trouble uploading. Photos go up instantly for me, but videos get stuck in a huge queue and it seems the only 'resolution' is to:

1) Make sure you have a SOLID wifi connection with high upload speed (i have fibre+ so getting around 13mbps upload)

2) Restart phone/dropbox

3) When camera upload loads saying it can't find photos click a few of the tabs at the bottom and go back to the photos tab and just leave it. For me after a minute or two it starts uploading the videos (VERY SLOWLY).

I think it's the large videos that cause these issues and it just puts them all on hold until it can upload them successfully

Simon F.12

Just further on this - it seems to upload one video and then return the annoying 'can't find photos' message. Many restarts and plugging in to power etc and it finally starts on the next one.

So I have to repeat this process 117 times - Nice one Dropbox - please can we have a fix for this?

Peter B.115

The same happened to me: After deleting some videos on the iPhone 5, I wanted to check whether they remain on Dropbox. - They were not on it, plus some others that were still on my phone! Not very nice!

What brought remedy is to turn off camera synch and then back on. Now, over 200 photos and movies are synching! - Uff!

What remains is a very uncomfortable feeling that this is not reliable, especially when the time comes to delete files on the iPhone to free up memory...

I wonder if some checks and balances could be implemented, e.g. Device specific upload counts in the "main" (browser) interface, which then correspond to a number displayed on the phone (would have to be limited to pictures that are still active on the phone, basically a confirmation of what dropbox is seeing on the device). Not sure what the solution is, but it needs to be addressed, otherwise I'll look fore something else.

Norman K.

Carousel used to be good at uploading

Now no matter if I move location or not I have to constantly open the Dropbox app on my phone and prod it into action

i have location services enabled and background loading also set

it almost looks like background loading is not working

it was very annoying when I travelled a couple of years ago because I wanted my photos to upload overnight while we had wifi

Simon R.27

Those are the exact symptoms I have.

My more important question is why are Dropbox not making any comments on this subject or telling us what we are doing wrong.

krisl

just turn on dropbox on your phone

VeryDynamite

Also Dbox discontinued Carousel. Right?

VeryDynamite

Wow. Just follow those million easy steps. Dumb. Dropbox support: I use Dropobox camera uploads as my primary back up for photos. It has been working seamlessly for the past few YEARS then all of the sudden I'm getting this error. Please look into this matter and resolve it. We pay for this service.

AnnoyedinNC

I've tried literally everything suggested here in this forum (which isn't much, for the record) and nothing has worked. I have loads of space left in Dropbox that I've paid for, and really need to be able to access the photos on my iPhone 6 from Dropbox on my desktop. After working consistently for years, I've been able to sync NOTHING since the middle of November.

Help!?

VeryDynamite

Looks like we're preaching to each other AnnoyedinNC. I wonder if D-box support looks at these forums or are we just wandering in an echo chamber. HELLO? Anybody out there?

AnnoyedinNC

I just asked via Twitter as well, though that site cautions that the account is only monitored M-F....

tinkerx

This seems excessive to me and I dislike having to delete, reinstall and sync with gigbytes of data in Dropbox.

Here is what worked for me:

Disconnect iPhone.
Turn off Enable camera uploads in Dropbox preferences.
Run the following tasks in MainMenu (if you do not have the app, you can get it here: http://mainmenuapp.com.). I am not sure which one may have fixed the issue or that you need to run them all. Nonetheless, I thought I would share all that I did pretty much in the order that I did them.
- Clean User Cash
- Remove Corrupt Preferences
- Flush DNS Cache (probably not necessary).
- Clean All Logs
- Clean Archived Logs
- All Maintenance
- Clean Font Cache (weidly this fixed a lot of weird bugs in the past so I ran it).
  - This one will force a restart.
Turn on Enable camera upload.
Connect iPhone.

This worked for me. I am not affiliated with MainMenu in any way.

Kora

Hi @vajda f.

Normally the photos/videos that are uploaded via Camera Uploads to Dropbox, are available, when it comes to Macs, on a subfolder inside the Dropbox folder on FINDER.

If you do not see them there, then this should need a more personalized attention and you should create a ticket.

Kora

seanmkennedy

Dropbox on my Mac wasn't uploading 400+ new photos when I connected it to my iPhone through the USB cable, and after repeated troubleshooting, including coming to this forum, I finally just tried opening the Dropbox app on my iPhone; after exiting the folder the app was in and returning to the home screen, the photos (and a couple of videos) started uploading a couple at a time until they were all transferred. An obvious fix I stumbled into, but if you haven't tried it, give it a go.

My fix to this issue was simple: go to DROPBOX APP on my iPhone and simply turn ON the “camera upload” feature again.

It was turned OFF (without me having done/changed it - must have been after some update of the dropbox app…).

brandherd

I had the same issue. I guess after updating the db app on my iphone camera uploads was deactivated for whatever reason… turning on camera uploads in the app settings again immediately solved the problem!

Pablo A.2

You don't think maybe Apple is mad we're not using iCloud, and added some sneaky **bleep** into their latest iOS updates just to screw with Dropbox, do you? I know that sounds paranoid, but I wouldn't put it past the three ring circus that is post-Jobs Apple.

Either way, the Camera Uploads function has gone way downhill since they did away with Carousel. I loved that app, I have absolutely no idea why they got rid of it.