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Forum Discussion
Dropbox not syncing files with emojis in the filename
Hello, I am trying to use dropbox to sync an application that has a bunch of image files in a subfolder. The image files are of emojis, and each filename IS the emoji that it represents. For exam...
Hi aronskaya, thanks for messaging the Community!
Some emojis are supported, however, the issue is related to UTF encoding.
The emojis that aren't working (along with many other, newer emoji) use 4 bytes, which our filesystem doesn't support. The emoji that do work on Dropbox.com are those that use less than 4 bytes.Dropbox supports using emoji that fall in the Basic Multilingual Plance in file and folder names on the website (although there are some OSes that might not sync the files to your desktop computer due to not playing nice with local filesystems).
Emoji that fall into the Supplementary Multilingual Plane won't work with the Dropbox underlying filesystem, newer emoji fall into this category and are not expected to sync with Dropbox.
Hope this helps to clarify matters!
Same here, I cannot sync files with emojis in names. It is really frustrating. If the operating systems support these names, Dropbox has to support them, too.
I use Dropbox to sync my notes, and emojis in note's names are really helpful. Please consider to fix this.
Jay
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi aronskaya, thanks for messaging the Community!
Some emojis are supported, however, the issue is related to UTF encoding.
The emojis that aren't working (along with many other, newer emoji) use 4 bytes, which our filesystem doesn't support. The emoji that do work on Dropbox.com are those that use less than 4 bytes.
Dropbox supports using emoji that fall in the Basic Multilingual Plance in file and folder names on the website (although there are some OSes that might not sync the files to your desktop computer due to not playing nice with local filesystems).
Emoji that fall into the Supplementary Multilingual Plane won't work with the Dropbox underlying filesystem, newer emoji fall into this category and are not expected to sync with Dropbox.
Hope this helps to clarify matters!
It's one thing to have a hole in your pants and an entirely different thing to patch said hole.
It's been about two years and really nothing has been done to fix the incompatibility with Dropbox and emoji in filenames.
I'm fairly certain it doesn't even raise an error when syncing.
This is certainly a bug. Windows and OS X aren't going to remove emoji filename support anytime soon.
I'm not here to defend Dropbox, but I think the characterization that Dropbox does not support emoji is not correct. They DO support emoji's, but only a subset of emoji's that are have more universal support accross systems. That subset is described in previous posts within this thread.
This limition does mean that we have to be careful which emoji we can use, and it is it has been a bit annoying on my part because I constantly have to check for unsupported unicode characters (emoji are unicode) and delete them from filenames in order to sync.
My feedback to Dropbox:
1. If you can easily extend support to the wider set of unicode characters, please do so.
2. If not, at least please give us an easy way to systemically check for files that fail to sync due to unsupported names. As of right now, it fails silently, and I have to manually check for which files have the "red" mark next to it with a visual scan, which is not a good use of my time.
The problem is that the average end user isn't going to care that only a subset of emoji isn't supported nor will they care about the explaination. They'll just say that files failing to sync because of characters in the filename is broken... and they are entirely correct.
I think this would have been fixed faster if files with accents or file using non-latin alphabets didn't sync. Then it would have been taken seriously.
Are there any plans to provide fuller emoji support in filenames?
I'm thinking of moving my working files from Dropbox because of the lack of emoji support.
Most of the explanations of the issue - including those in this thread - are wrong. The best account I have found to identify emojis that do work is that to avoid all emojis coded U+1F. Nearly (nearly!!!) all of those I have tried with other codes do work - so far I have found two that don't, though I haven't tested quite all of them.
But that excludes most emojis and requires individual testing of each one. I have a list of most of those that work at this point in time. Can I trust that the same list will always work in the future? - obviously not because Dropbox is determinedly non-communicative about the issue and such knowledge as there is has been dug up by users. The fact that these work now may just be a quirk of the current programming.
