rclone/docs/content/dropbox.md

title	description	date
Dropbox	Rclone docs for Dropbox	2020-03-18

Dropbox

Paths are specified as remote:path

Dropbox paths may be as deep as required, eg remote:directory/subdirectory.

The initial setup for dropbox involves getting a token from Dropbox which you need to do in your browser. rclone config walks you through it.

Here is an example of how to make a remote called remote. First run:

 rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

n) New remote
d) Delete remote
q) Quit config
e/n/d/q> n
name> remote
Type of storage to configure.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
[snip]
XX / Dropbox
   \ "dropbox"
[snip]
Storage> dropbox
Dropbox App Key - leave blank normally.
app_key>
Dropbox App Secret - leave blank normally.
app_secret>
Remote config
Please visit:
https://www.dropbox.com/1/oauth2/authorize?client_id=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX&response_type=code
Enter the code: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX_XXXXXXXXXX
--------------------
[remote]
app_key =
app_secret =
token = XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX_XXXX_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

You can then use it like this,

List directories in top level of your dropbox

rclone lsd remote:

List all the files in your dropbox

rclone ls remote:

To copy a local directory to a dropbox directory called backup

rclone copy /home/source remote:backup

Dropbox for business

Rclone supports Dropbox for business and Team Folders.

When using Dropbox for business remote: and remote:path/to/file will refer to your personal folder.

If you wish to see Team Folders you must use a leading / in the path, so rclone lsd remote:/ will refer to the root and show you all Team Folders and your User Folder.

You can then use team folders like this remote:/TeamFolder and remote:/TeamFolder/path/to/file.

A leading / for a Dropbox personal account will do nothing, but it will take an extra HTTP transaction so it should be avoided.

Modified time and Hashes

Dropbox supports modified times, but the only way to set a modification time is to re-upload the file.

This means that if you uploaded your data with an older version of rclone which didn't support the v2 API and modified times, rclone will decide to upload all your old data to fix the modification times. If you don't want this to happen use --size-only or --checksum flag to stop it.

Dropbox supports its own hash type which is checked for all transfers.

Restricted filename characters

Character	Value	Replacement
NUL	0x00	␀
/	0x2F	／
DEL	0x7F	␡
\	0x5C	＼

File names can also not end with the following characters. These only get replaced if they are the last character in the name:

Character	Value	Replacement
SP	0x20	␠

Invalid UTF-8 bytes will also be replaced, as they can't be used in JSON strings.

Standard Options

Here are the standard options specific to dropbox (Dropbox).

--dropbox-client-id

Dropbox App Client Id Leave blank normally.

• Config: client_id
• Env Var: RCLONE_DROPBOX_CLIENT_ID
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--dropbox-client-secret

Dropbox App Client Secret Leave blank normally.

• Config: client_secret
• Env Var: RCLONE_DROPBOX_CLIENT_SECRET
• Type: string
• Default: ""

Advanced Options

Here are the advanced options specific to dropbox (Dropbox).

--dropbox-chunk-size

Upload chunk size. (< 150M).

Any files larger than this will be uploaded in chunks of this size.

Note that chunks are buffered in memory (one at a time) so rclone can deal with retries. Setting this larger will increase the speed slightly (at most 10% for 128MB in tests) at the cost of using more memory. It can be set smaller if you are tight on memory.

• Config: chunk_size
• Env Var: RCLONE_DROPBOX_CHUNK_SIZE
• Type: SizeSuffix
• Default: 48M

--dropbox-impersonate

Impersonate this user when using a business account.

• Config: impersonate
• Env Var: RCLONE_DROPBOX_IMPERSONATE
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--dropbox-encoding

This sets the encoding for the backend.

See: the encoding section in the overview for more info.

• Config: encoding
• Env Var: RCLONE_DROPBOX_ENCODING
• Type: MultiEncoder
• Default: Slash,BackSlash,Del,RightSpace,InvalidUtf8,Dot

Limitations

Note that Dropbox is case insensitive so you can't have a file called "Hello.doc" and one called "hello.doc".

There are some file names such as thumbs.db which Dropbox can't store. There is a full list of them in the "Ignored Files" section of this document. Rclone will issue an error message File name disallowed - not uploading if it attempts to upload one of those file names, but the sync won't fail.

If you have more than 10,000 files in a directory then rclone purge dropbox:dir will return the error Failed to purge: There are too many files involved in this operation. As a work-around do an rclone delete dropbox:dir followed by an rclone rmdir dropbox:dir.

Get your own Dropbox App ID

When you use rclone with Dropbox in its default configuration you are using rclone's App ID. This is shared between all the rclone users.

Here is how to create your own Dropbox App ID for rclone:

1. Log into the Dropbox App console with your Dropbox Account (It need not to be the same account as the Dropbox you want to access)

2. Choose an API => Usually this should be Dropbox API

3. Choose the type of access you want to use => Full Dropbox or App Folder

4. Name your App. The app name is global, so you can't use rclone for example

5. Click the button Create App

6. Fill Redirect URIs as http://localhost:53682/

7. Find the App key and App secret Use these values in rclone config to add a new remote or edit an existing remote.