The additional benefit is that you can sync and back up entire directories that would be otherwise difficult to move. So with one 25-byte symlink you can back up gigabytes upon gigabytes of data without duplicating it on your computer. But if you put a symlink into the Dropbox folder, when the Dropbox backup app looks at it it's redirected to the linked file, and it backs that up instead. If you were to create an alias to a file and put that in the Dropbox folder, only the alias would get backed up, and that's not terribly useful. Put a tiny symlink into Dropbox and it can back up an entire folder elsewhere on your computer Thing is, if you want to back up files to Dropbox, copying them into that folder means they're taking up space twice on your hard drive, and just moving them to Dropbox takes them right out of your organizational flow. Upload a file from a Dropbox app or their web interface and it'll be downloaded onto your computer. Place a file in that folder and it's synced to the cloud. Whatever you do with the symbolic link (or symlink) is applied to the linked file.ĭropbox works by creating a folder on your computer that is synced with their servers. A symbolic link is similar, except that instead of creating a pointer it creates a redirect. You might be familiar with alias links on your Mac - it creates a shortcut that points to another file, open the shortcut and it opens that file. It all works through the magic of symbolic links. Turns out, there's another way, one in which you can keep your folders and files right where they are and have them backed up and synced with Dropbox. But there were two basic options for backing up my files to Dropbox: either copy them over regularly, or just move them onto Dropbox (oh, the humanity). I can open the Dropbox app on my iPhone or iPad and get to all the files in there with ease and speed.

Uploads and downloads sling through the web as fast as my connection can handle. Dropbox, on the other hand, is blazing fast.

Mac setup dropbox for all users