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Forum Discussion
accessing online-only files from macos terminal
I have a large, shared dropbox folder that is set to "online-only", but I want to make specific files available offline. I know I can do this via right clicks in the Finder window for individual file...
Well that sucks. Can I do it without individually clicking every file I need (and without making the entire root folder available offline)?
Jay
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi kjmed, currently it isn't possible to perform the action you want without manually selecting each file to mark them as available offline.
Is there a time frame for when/if you can get this fixed? Not being able to get a file synced and available, no matter how you choose to access it, and with what tool, is a huge ergonomic problem for me. Dropbox has become a lot less useful now. This may of course be a MacOS issue too, but if there is a way to get around it, configure stuff differently etc, I would be all ears.
As you state that this currently doesn't work, could you please tell me if there is a working resolution in the works, or if this is going to be the permanent state of things until Apple does something differently?
/M
This has been a problem for me as well - exactly as OP described it in detail.
Are you serious? That is going to mean hours of tediously navigating folders and manually clicking specific files.
This is 100% a bug. Is the dropbox team working on fixing it?
- Jay
This would be the normal behavior for the Dropbox desktop application, as there hasn't ever been a command line option to mark files as online-only.
We do appreciate your feedback on how to improve the Dropbox service, and take all comments into consideration.
The bug isn't related to command-line access specifically. The bug is that apps (including terminal) cannot interact with files at all. Until recently, if any app (including terminal) tried to access a file in a folder set to "smart sync" or whatever it's called, dropbox would automatically download it if it wasn't already available locally. Thus, a folder could be kept on the cloud, and files accessed locally as needed.
After the recent macOS change, if there is a file in a "smart sync" folder, it shows up as zero bytes for any app or terminal command that tries to read it, and thus it can't actually be used. You confirmed that the only way around this is to manually click every individual file or folder that I need to make them available offline.
This particular shared group folder is several TB and contains many thousands of files, the vast majority of which I do not need to read, so I'm not about to make the entire folder as "available offline" and download all of that.
