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Why have new Camera Upload files changed to the format "Photo abc"?

At some point over the last few months, Dropbox randomly stopped uploading my photos from my iPhone 13 (iOS17 and now 18). After lots of poor app behaviour, I eventually managed to re-enable it, having manually been uploading files for quite some time.

As soon as I pointed it back at the right folder, it started uploading... but with the word "Photo" in front of the filename!!

So thanks to this stupidity, I now have hundreds of duplicate photos, called things like "2024-09-18 19.38.54.jpg" and "Photo 18-09-24, 19 38 54.jpg".

So not only has it completely renamed it, it's ruined all possibilities to sort by title.

As a final slap in the face, it's processed the images to half their size and reduced the quality!

So, Dropbox... how do I disable this ridiculous "feature" that some imbecile decided would be good to suddenly implement?

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Accepted answers

Jay

It looks like you're using the manual uploader in the first image, and not the automatic camera upload feature. When using the manual uploader, it retains the original file name.

Could you confirm the original name of the image prior to uploading it, by viewing it in iOS itself?

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Jay

Hi @rgledhill, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

There hasn't been any change to how images are uploaded via the Dropbox mobile app. As far as I'm aware, the format is the same as it has since it was created, YYYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS.jpg.

Are you certain that this is the Dropbox mobile app uploading the images that way? Is it possible that you have an automation running on the camera uploads folder?

This will help me to assist further!

rgledhill

Hi Jay,

Thanks, I really appreciate you coming back to me so quickly as this is pretty much rendering Dropbox unusable for me.

Yes, it's definitely Dropbox messing up the filename. I have literally thousands of photos, all following the same naming convention. When I manually upload them, the filenames remain correct. However as soon as I set the Camera Uploads folder back to Camera Roll (it had been set to "Videos" somehow), Dropbox immediately set about renaming the photos with this other naming convention and uploading them. If I look in the Camera Uploads directory within the Dropbox app, I now have a load of files saying "Photo xx-xx-xx, yy yy yy.jpg", modified 39 minutes ago. This has never happened before and only happened when I switched the upload directory back to Camera Uploads.

I've never set up any automations in Dropbox. I have an extremely simple use case for Dropbox on my phone - back up my photos and videos to Camera Uploads. That's it. And it used to do it ok, then it got worse as it stopped automatically uploading, and now it's wrecked my photos directory!

rgledhill

Here's an example screenshot of what I'm now presented with - duplicates at lower size, with sometimes a 1s time difference, and with "Photo" at the start...

Jay

Did you apply any filters to your images when you were taking the original photo, or made any other changes at the same time?

Are you using the normal camera app on the phone?

rgledhill

Nope, no special filters.

I think I might have found something though. I've tried going through the steps that I did earlier and I've found that if I go to the "Camera Uploads" page on the app, then click Upload, it shows me my "library", separated into Photos and Collections. If I select one or more photos from there and click Add, magically it renames the file before uploading it!

So this problem appears to be in the Upload section of the Camera Uploads page.

Jay

When you say it renames the file, is this to the new format you experienced, or the normal one?

Could you attach a screenshot showing the selection you made in the library in the Camera Uploads setting?

rgledhill

It's to the new format:

and here is how the same file looks, when uploaded automatically (rather than the manual upload step above):

So it's definitely the Dropbox photo uploader that's changing the name of the file.

Jay

It looks like you're using the manual uploader in the first image, and not the automatic camera upload feature. When using the manual uploader, it retains the original file name.

Could you confirm the original name of the image prior to uploading it, by viewing it in iOS itself?

rgledhill

Apologies for the slow reply...

Actually it looks like both systems are renaming it (and note that up until now, I've always used the automatic uploader). If I go into my photo album on my phone, open a photo and tap on the i button, it says IMG_0513...

Rich

@rgledhill wrote:
Actually it looks like both systems are renaming it ... If I go into my photo album on my phone, open a photo and tap on the i button, it says IMG_0513...

That would be the typical behavior. The naming convention for manual uploads differs from automatic uploads. Neither format has changed recently.

rgledhill

Hmm, so what you're saying is that the two methods have always given different results? That's pretty rubbish. Why on earth would someone implement that?

I guess it's because I've repeatedly had to manually tell the Dropbox app to trigger Camera Uploads, and only recently had to try the manual route. Really annoying.

AnnaBanana33

Experiencing the same issue. I had to delete and then minutes later reinstall the Dropbox App on my iPhone 14 Pro version 18.1.1. Until that point all the camera uploads were formatted as [YYYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS] But now they are showing up as [Photo Dec 26 2024, 4 44 56 PM.jpg] or [Video Dec 25 2024, 9 13 15 AM.mov] Is there a way to reset the mobile "Camera Uploads" naming convention to the original?
Please note, I am not using manual uploading. I simply opted to upload my photos and videos to the camera upload folder, immediately after reinstalling the app.

AnnaBanana33

I was able to resolve this by:

Setting an automation to rename new uploads. (Via Dropbox.com interface)
1. By selecting YYYY-MM-DD format, I got very close to the original naming.
  1. Original: YYYY-MM-DD[space]HH.MM.SS
  2. Automation: YYYY-MM-DD - HH.MM.SS
2. I also opted to rename the previous uploads with the new automation, since the unexpected long format mentioned in this thread was a lot worse.
Deleting all the files in Camera Uploads.
Clearing Cache in the app settings.
Making sure I have no automations set on the folder. (Delete the one I had set above)

Not sure exactly what resolved the issue. But we're back to original. I did not have to reinstall the app, nor was I able to find any settings other than the automation feature on the website UI.

I hope this helps.