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How can I make files online-only on Ubuntu?

Dear all

Recently, I moved from Windows 11 to Ubuntu 24.04 in my laptop. During my journey in Windows, I was always very pleased with the integration between Dropbox and my operating system, as I could browse all the folders in my Dropbox account locally on my laptop without having to go to the web browser, even those that were not synced to my computer (i.e. I could access the folders not downloaded to my computer, see the file names... and when I double-clicked on a file, it would be downloaded to my computer and I could access it quickly and easily).

When I downloaded and synced Dropbox with Ubuntu on my laptop, all the files and folders in my Dropbox account started to store a copy locally on my computer. For those folders that took up a lot of space and that I wasn't going to use at the moment, I right-clicked on them and checked the option to not sync with dropbox.com. However, this did not have the effect of clearing the space that these folders were taking up, with the desired functionality of being able to browse my laptop locally and see their names and be able to access them even if they weren't synced.

I was wondering if there was a way to mimic this functionality that I enjoyed on Windows.

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Comments

Jay

Hi @rimaroa, thanks for messaging the Community!

The option to mark files and folders as online-only isn't currently available on Linux OS systems.

This means that by default, all files would be made available locally on Linux. If you wish, you can use selective sync to prevent entire folders from syncing to your machine.

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

trombasso

@Jaycould you say anything about if this functionality, wich is deeply missed by myself as well, is in the dev teams backlog? Is there any way to give it an upvote?

Nancy

Hey @trombasso, I’ve shared your feedback on this with our team, so that they can see your comments here and take this into account.

Spatterson

We are moving more of our systems to Ubuntu and really could use the "online only" sync function as well.

LudwigVRtualX

Hey, we are also transitioning some systems to Ubuntu and very much need this feature. These days a lot of businesses are transitioning. It would be very great if you could prioritize this. If this feature will not exist in the near future, we will switch to a different sync service.

t4ngml

Same here, this is a must have when you pay for the Business plan.

ert1

With more people moving away from Windows to Linux by the end of 2025, now is really the time to have this feature. I am also a client and need this very much.

Matt C

How is this not a feature yet? Syncing a business account to Linux just kills your hard drive space.

It's like Microsoft makes using Dropbox such a pain because they want to shove OneDrive down your throat, but then move away from Windows and you find you're missing major features like this.

Ivan92

We are in the same boat. Need online only for Linux. We happen to be using Arch Linux, not Ubuntu. Not having this option as a paying customer is frustrating to say the least.