How to prevent download option from dropbox video player?

Question

I use share links of videos to put on my website and I change the end paramters to "raw=1" to make this happen. All is fine except for the fact that anyone can click the 3 dots and download the video. Is there any option to disable this? This is what I'm talking about: [External link removed to allign with our Community guidelines]

I tried the option to disable downloads in link settings but then the video does not play at all.

Здравко · Answer

Ooohh... If the problems are default browser player options, they could be disabled using different approaches. Overflow the player with a

tag, for example, and redirect clicks alternatively to play and pause. :wink: No very powerful but simple solution. You can use HTML like following (as idea):

Unfortunately Dropbox don't allow their player embedding. Would be more convenient (and secure, if the above is used as a compare base), but... :slight_frown:

alexkaplanphoto · Answer

Thanks for the reply. I realize anyone can download my video if they really want to. But most people looking at wedding videos won't even bother/want to use external methods to download a video. I just don't like the fact on how obvious Dropbox can notify viewers how easy anyone can just directly download the video. It would be nice like on how Google Drive I can embed videos and there is no direct option to download the video.

Здравко · Answer

Hi @alexkaplanphoto,

In fact, when you change the ending parameters to "raw=1", you have almost formed a download links! :wink:  The only difference is missing "content-disposition" in http header. If you embed a link with attribute "download", pointing to your video, it become download link. That's why when you disable downloads, video becomes completely inaccessible (including for play in your site). It still left accessible through the "dl=0" link, but only difference is a disabled download button! There is no secure way to completely prevent downloads. If somebody can see the video on your site, there is always a way to download it. Only thing you can do is to make it difficult, that's it. Dropbox don't provide actual instrumentation to make this secure enough, so be difficult to somebody more experienced than a small child (that isn't a main purpose for this service). In the page describing download disabling is noted:

Important note: Disabling downloads for a shared link prevents people from downloading the contents of a link through Dropbox. This doesn’t prevent people from saving the content using other methods.

That's why if you really want to "disable" downloads, have to use some server script (or similar techniques) for "reformatting" the stream in some way and make a download difficult enough. Your decision/solution should depends on target difficility. :wink:

Hope this gives some direction.