Apple Vision Pro Support with Dropbox.

I’m a graphic designer andI work at late nite tv show and all our assets are on Dropbox. I’ve been doing all my work through AVP for 3 months now and having direct access to Dropbox in Vision Pro would make a world of difference. I encourage the team at Dropbox to at least allow the iPad version of Dropbox to work within AVP - although I’m sure they would make a fantastic native version.

Thanks for the update, Pedro. I just want to take a moment to appreciate you and the other CMs (I can only imagine how difficult it is to be stuck in the middle and be the unfortunate messengers) and clarify that the following isn't directed at you.

I'm genuinely confused what there is for the dev team to investigate? I'm even more confused and surprised why Vision Pro support needs to be voted as a Dropbox Idea in the first place. 

iPadOS apps are, by default, compatible on VisionOS (citation here). It needs to be manually disabled for it to not show up on the native App Store, which means someone took the extra step to intentionally make it unavailable. No one has, even til now, explained why this decision was made. This is why it's frustrating.

I think most, if not all, of us would be understanding if there are some critical on the back-end that need to be worked out. A little strange, considering the initial SDKs have been available since June 2023, but that's okay. We can wait. If the team wants time to work on a native app, that's perfectly fine too. However the optics of the situation aren't being presented this way.

Most AVP users who are taking the time to drop a note in this forum are productivity focused and just want to have the ease of access to their documents, like any other user on any other existing platform. Users want their files to be available on local storage/offline should they need it. Does it matter if it's specially to view USDZ/OBJ files on device? Sure, but that's not everyone who's asking. Users of this device aren't all working on MR projects. There doesn't need to be a profound/unique use case that specially justifies why your user would want the app to exist on this device compared to other devices. The core utility of Dropbox as a service is the same regardless of which industry the user is from, regardless of what sort of device it's being used on. The iPadOS app is an already existing and capable interim solution.

Transparency would be much appreciated moving forward. 

June 5 2023 - Apple announces Apple Vision Pro at World Wide Developers Conference, makes available developer kits.

Feb 2 2024 - Released to Public

Feb 2024 (exact date unknown, so old DB community doesnt list) DropBox Product Manager jstdbx “We're eager to hear from you regarding what you're currently using your Vision Pro for and what/how you'd like to use Dropbox on it for.”

Feb 2024 Dropbox Staff “The Dropbox team is currently reviewing this idea. We will share any updates with you.”

March 2024 Community Manager Graham “I haven't had a chance to try Apple Vision Pro yet and I'm super-curious as to what it's capabilities are and whether it would be something I would consider adding to my tech kit.”

July 2024 Community Manager Laureline “We're currently working on it - however, and I know that this is not the answer that you'd like to hear, we currently don't have a estimate date of launch to share with you.”

Oct 1 2024 Community Manager DBX_Pedro “The Dropbox team is actively looking into it.

At the moment we do not have a particular date for resolution as of yet.

We greatly appreciate your understanding and patience over this period.”

******

Dropbox GREATLY over estimates my patience. As a developer, DB has had over a year to work on this, or if I am being generous, 7 months since it was released to everyone in the US.  

But what Dropbox really doesn’t get is I don’t like being placated, and ‘we are working on it’ just doesn’t’ cut it.

This isn’t about any of the community managers that have replied, this is clearly a DB leadership decision to treat its customers like they are stupid.

Has it really been seven months now? Considering all the other compatible iPad apps working on Vision Pro, I find it hard to believe just activating the existing iPad app is really that hard.  It appears that VP priority is less than zero and it may be time to move onto another platform. 

Hi everybody, 

The Dropbox team is actively looking into it.

At the moment we do not have a particular date for resolution as of yet.

We greatly appreciate your understanding and patience over this period.

Hi guys,

Just checking in if there's any update/timeline on this? It's been a couple of months and getting to the point where I'll need to consider what are some practical options moving forward.

Even if the native VisionOS app needs more time, just enabling the iPad version in the meantime would be fine. 

I am sorry, but I am also thinking of moving to a different provider as it is important for me to have my files on AVP. Kindly update if you are bringing out an app within the next few weeks. 

Adding my support for Dropbox to work with VisionOS. We are wanting to move staff to spatial computing because of the productivity gains we've been experiencing with some pilot programs. We are increasingly putting new data in OneDrive (better integration with Office365 apps) but (from memory) have ~30tb with ~6 licenses in Dropbox that many of our projects connect with. Eventually, will migrate those files to wherever provides the most productivity across MacOS, iPadOS, and now VisionOS. Would love that to be Dropbox to save us the hassle of migrating. Our common activities are working with Office365, Adobe apps, Apple Pages/Keynote/Numbers, FCPX.

Appreciate your work. Thanks for your considerations. 

My guess would be that it's not a technical matter, it's that Apple are being extremely restrictive with terms as they want users to move to iCloud.
But Dropbox won't want to say that publicly and ruin any relationships.

I also appreciate the clear statement regarding work on Dropbox for VisionOS. However, at some point very soon I will be looking for a specific date as my subscription renewal comes due in November. I am afraid to say that if there is not either an iPad version for VisionOS or a committed date for a full VisionOS Dropbox by the time of Apple's public release of VisionOS 2.0 in September, I will start removing my files from Dropbox and that will lead inevitably to non-renewal.