My company's Dropbox is quite large and obviously it would be undesirable to sync its entire contents locally. Yet during Dropbox login, you are told that your hard-drive does not have enough space, leading you to think that you should use selective sync to minimize what folders get synced. Moreover, this same idea is implied on the description for the Selective Sync option itself:
The option implies that if you sync files to your hard-drive, they will use hard-drive space.
Yet, all of this is false. Dropbox syncs files as online-only. They only download locally when opened or if the folder option is set to "Make available offline".
Consequently, numerous people at my company have not been syncing folders. They've been using Dropbox through the browser, which is tedious and has encouraged them to keep work files locally or elsewhere in order to avoid the aforementioned tedium. Who knows how many hours this has wasted across the company over the past couple of years.
This might some of the worst UI design I've ever encountered. Dropbox is sabotaging the way in which users want to use their product. I'm a long-time Dropbox user. I stuck with the product out of loyalty. If I had wanted a cloud drive in 2025 and ran into this, I would not used Dropbox.
TLDR:
- Please stop telling users that their hard-drive space will get consumed when they log in.
- Please change the Selective Sync description to not imply that hard-drive space will get consumed on synced folders.
