Show HN: I created an app to sync any folder with Dropbox
boxifier.comHi there,
Razvan (author) here. I created an app to sync any folder with Dropbox. It currently works on Windows. Haven't finished the website yet, just the app.
A little background on the app: I wanted to backup my external drives to Dropbox for a while and tried using symlinks but those don't work for that. If you remove the external drive, all your files will get deleted from Dropbox. Also, you need to restart Dropbox if you make changes to the folders on the external drive. Otherwise, they won't be synced.
I talked to my twin brother about this and he suggested building an app for that. Having a background in Windows internals we decided to go ahead and build it. We wanted to solve that in an elegant and effortless way, something even our parents (who are not tech savvy) could use.
So here is Boxifier, a Windows app which installs on top of Dropbox and lets you right click any folder and sync it to Dropbox.
I would really appreciate any feedback you might have. Thanks, Razvan
Great! already, subscribed.. also, two things that you can think about for the future:
1) I have the impression that a lot of people want to share, say, git folders, so there may actually be a huge demand for file exclusions (I think there is a mac app for that, but nothing in windows). 2) Can I pick where in dropbox will this be synced to? When you have 100s of GBs (or dropbox for business accounts), your root DB folder can get very polluted, so linking to subfolders can be useful.
Thanks again!
1) Yes, file exclusions are definitely on our roadmap.
2) For now folders sync as subfolders of the Dropbox\Boxifier folder, but we've been receiving this feature request so that you can pick where your outside folders will be synced in Dropbox. This is also on our roadmap.
Hi Razvan,
Is there a way to exclude some files? Or can one be added? E.G. i tend to have a "tmp" subfolder that I want to exclude; or maybe exclude some file extensions? (kinda like .gitignore does?)
Hi Sergio,
Not for now, but we're working on a solution for this. I'll let you know when it is available.
Would you mind giving a bit more information about how it's working?
Sure. It adds a file system virtualization layer under the Dropbox desktop client so that folders outside of Dropbox are seen by the Dropbox client as part of the Dropbox folder.
Boxifier monitors those folders for changes, aggregates the changes and then passes them to the Dropbox client through the virtualization layer.
Boxifier is a third party application.
Some people are not comfortable giving third party applications access to their Dropbox account.
That’s why when building Boxifier we made an effort to make it work without needing access to your Dropbox account.
This way you can try Boxifier with no worries.
We also sleep better at night because of that.
I'm not sure I understand how not giving access to your Dropbox account to Boxifier makes you that more comfortable -- Boxifier will be able to read/write your Dropbox files anyways, what's the big difference?
The big difference here is the principle of least privilege[1].
We could have built Boxifier so that it requires you to login into Dropbox and get back an access token to be used by Boxifier with the Dropbox API.
If someone wanted to get access to the data in your Dropbox account, they could do that with an access token (that they received when you authorized their app to access your Dropbox). Then they could use that token from any computer to download data from your Dropbox, without you ever finding out about it.
Boxifier works completely offline so it doesn't need any network access (which could be misused). If you want to be 101% sure you can setup a firewall rule and block all network access for Boxifier. This way you can make sure it cannot get data from your Dropbox folder and upload it to a remote location.
On the other hand, with an access token you have no control on how it is used outside of your computer. You may argue that you can always revoke it, but the reality of today's attacks is that they go stealth for a long time before you find out about them.
We used to work in the antivirus industry so that's why we care so much about security and privacy. Boxifier has been designed with security in mind from its early days.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege
This ia good effort might even force the hand of Dropbox to add a similar feature to the official client.
I need a solution to use all the 1TB of Dropbox space available without having to have 1TB of space on my laptop and without having to resort to use the web interface.
Could you please try Boxifier and let me know how it works for you? I would appreciate it.
Something that has always annoyed me about Dropbox. But honestly I'm not going to bother given that I have to pay in order to sync more than 3 folders. Specially when I can accomplish this with a bit of hackery and symlinks.
Nice product though.
In before acquired by Dropbox :)
Great job! This is a much feature in Dropbox. Would be awesome if it worked on Macs.
Dropbox could have added this feature years ago but didn't, and I think the reason they don't is for simplicity and usability for the end user, not because they didn't think of it.
Selecting folders to sync seems a lot easier than copying files into a folder whose only purpose is to sync, but I guess I don't have my finger on the pulse of the geriatric segment.
protip: symlinks :)
Just curious, why only 30 minutes to try out the premium features?
One of the reasons is that I've seen it as a common practice with other software I used. For instance, the demo version of Traktor Pro 2 DJ-ing software closes itself after 30 minutes.
We've also set a high quality bar for us with 30 minutes. If the product doesn't deliver on its promise in 30 minutes then it means we need to do better.
We chose the 30 minutes instead of making the product a 7-day or 14-day or 30-day trial because we prefer freemium to software trials. With a number of days for you to try the software you can for instance install on day 1, go to a business trip on day 2 and when you return on day 7 realize that the software expired and you didn't even get the chance to try it out. With the attention economy of today, we believe day-based software trials are broken.
With Boxifier, if you don't find the time today you can try out the premium features again tomorrow, next week or whenever you find some free time because the product never expires.
to promote open source spirit...
How is this different from creating symlinks?
1) With symlinks Dropbox doesn't sync the changes you make to those folders until you restart it. With Boxifier, changes are synced in real-time.
2) If the target of the symlink is not available/not found then Dropbox will delete the contents of that folder from your account. This is the case for instance with removable drives. With Boxifier, ejecting the USB drive doesn't cause the contents to be deleted from your Dropbox account.
3) If you use selective sync with a symlink, the contents of the target folder willl be deleted you uncheck the folder from the selective sync settings dialog. With Boxifier, this doesn't happen because it has built-in support for this scenario. The folder just gets marked internally as inactive.
4) Symlinked folders lack the Dropbox overlay icons (green checkmarks, blue circles) so you can't get an idea of what the sync progress on those folders is. With Boxifier you have full Explorer integration so that you get the same experience as with the Dropbox folder.
5) Symlinked folders lack the Dropbox context menu functionality. With Boxifier you get the full Dropbox context menu functionality so you can easily share files, get public links, see previous versions or see them on Dropbox.com
6) A person who is not tech savvy will probably have a hard time understanding how to use symlinks and all their shortcomings. With Boxifier you simply right-click a folder to sync it with Dropbox. No need to be a computer wizard.
Is there something like this for OneDrive?
It already exists on OS X[1], and it also works with Google Drive and a bunch of other cloud storage providers.
This isn't the same thing though, the killer app feature of the OP's product is the fact that it handles removable media properly. I would very much like that feature on the OSX platform.
Which basically is a limited grafical interface for `ln -s`.
True, but it works exactly as you'd expect it to.