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flyhen's avatar
flyhen
Explorer | Level 3
2 months ago

How can I only upload the photos from my phone and not my computer to Dropbox?

Hello All,   I've noticed that (for awhile now) after I enabled the "Turn on camera uploads" on my iphone, whenever I had the iOS Dropbox App open, it not only uploaded all the photos in the ipho...
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Mark's avatar
Mark
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

Sorry I'm confused, where is the symlink on the iPhone or is it on the Mac? Note that Dropbox doesn't support or follow symlinks. 

 

However, Dropbox does now upload photos from the photo albums on the mobile device. So its possible it is pulling them from that. You can change it in the 'Back Up...' menu

flyhen's avatar
flyhen
Explorer | Level 3
2 months ago

Hi, sorry for the late reply, i was travelling.

1. the symlink probably has nothing to do with mobile devices as it is a symlink between my laptop and dropbox itself.

2. don't mean to complicate things, but when i open the dropbox app in my iphone, it will look for any new photos to upload/back in my camera roll, but not only that, it will also do the same for my laptop (photos in the symlink folders).

All I want is the iphone to be backed up, not the new photos in my laptop.

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    2 months ago
    flyhen wrote:

    ... when i open the dropbox app in my iphone, it will look for any new photos to upload/back in my camera roll, but not only that, it will also do the same for my laptop

    Dropbox doesn't do that. The mobile app can only upload photos and videos that are in the albums on your iPhone. It can't upload photos or videos from your Mac.

     

    One thought, though, and I'm not a Mac user so correct me if I'm wrong, please. Does iCloud sync albums across devices? If so, could it be that iCloud is syncing the photos on your Mac to an album on your iPhone, and Dropbox is uploading the content of that album?

     

    Mark, you're a Mac guy. Does that sound right?

    • flyhen's avatar
      flyhen
      Explorer | Level 3
      2 months ago

      This has nothing to do with icloud sync, 1. I don't have enough space for that 2. I didn't enable anything, so that's never the case.

      I just checked now, when I open the dropbox app on iphone, it was looking for new photos to backup, and interestingly, this time, it was about to backup my new photos in the "Download" folder in Mac (also a symlink folder with dropbox ).

      The plot thickens.

      • Jay's avatar
        Jay
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        2 months ago

        Hi flyhen, it sounds like you've enabled the Dropbox Backup feature on the Mac, is that correct? This is why files from those folders are appearing in Dropbox. 

         

        Which folders did you select on your phone for the camera upload feature, since it should be possible to select more than just the camera roll?

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