When I decided to set up local storage drives at home with a Synology NAS1 (for network-attached storage), I realized Dropbox finally released a feature I've been waiting for for years: adding storage space to your plan.
My Dropbox Essentials plan allows me to increase my storage quota by multiples of 1TB at $63.62/year each.2 If you are on a yearly plan, you get charged for the extra space for the remainder of the billing period, and, supposedly, they don't guarantee you'll get refunded if you decrease the quota—but I think they would if you downgrade.3 The gist is that you can increase your quota whenever you run out of space. My 3TB plan was capped at 4TB by adding one extra terabyte, and that was it. And it took Dropbox years to enable this feature to get more space in their paid plans. (I'm unsure whether this add-on is available in the Family plan.)
I don't know what took them so long, as I think many people will add terabytes to their accounts and will pay them more.
It is convenient, but late for me. I'm running in the opposite direction, trying to rely less on the cloud to store my data.
I got the Synology DS923+, a NAS with four bays that can be extended up to nine bays with two 12TB Seagate Ironwolf drives for redundancy. Kudos to Rafa Roa for the recommendation. ↩
Storage Space (quantity 1). $59.88 / year. Adds 1 TB of storage space. Purchasable up to 1,000 TB. Read more on Dropbox's help page. ↩
The fine print reads, "If you cancel, previous charges won't be refunded unless it's legally required." ↩
I received the following email from Dropbox notifying me that Dropbox for macOS on File Provider was ready.
We’re writing to let you know that Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is ready. This updated version of the Dropbox app has a deep integration with macOS to ensure you have the best Dropbox experience.
To get started, ensure your computer is on the latest version of macOS and click the Dropbox icon in your menu bar. On the notification that appears, click Get started.
File Provider is a macOS API in the form of "an extension other apps use to access files and folders managed by your app and synced with a remote storage."
I'm in macOS Sonoma, and so far, the transition has been smooth. It seems like macOS indexed my entire Dropbox library, which is north of 500,000 files.
Offline file loading on double-click has improved, and it seems third-party apps that read configuration files from Dropbox aren't having any issues doing so.
Other than that, the overall experience feels the same.
This move was forced by Apple and is meant to improve how Dropbox and other cloud file providers work.
Let's see how it goes.
