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Comment by dreamcompiler | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox is two things: Cheap cloud file storage with an API, and a desktop app.

The desktop app used to be a glorified FUSE app that worked well (except on ARM Linux for some reason) and got out of your way. Now Dropbox has decided it's time to ruin the desktop app in an effort to chase conversions. This strategy will fail.

Fortunately their cloud storage backend still works (unless it bugs you that they just increased the price a little bit while doubling the storage). There are several third-party clients that seem to work as replacements for the Dropbox client app. I'll probably move to Expandrive, which now supports Linux (it didn't before). Other suggestions welcome.

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As an Apple ecosystem user (not evangelist), I stopped using Dropbox completely in favor of iCloud. I mainly only used DB for syncing 1Password keychains but randomly other stuff too. I do trust apple in terms of security and their offering is affordable, painless and works well for my needs. May not fit well for more power-user types and for people who need cross-platform compatibility but it’s worth a look if you happen to be in the ecosystem and haven’t taken a gander as yet.

Same here. I even had premium (or whatever they called it) plan, but moved everything to the iCloud drive and went back to basic, though most likely I don't even have Dropbox running on my machine right now.

I just installed Dropbox after few years because I need to sync some folders. The new application is terrible! It took me a long time to find the selective sync options, instead it's showing me some features that I am not interested in at all.

My biggest complaint of the new dropbox app (for Windows) is that every other day the tray icon routinely pops up alerts (or warning badges over the icon) that look alarming. But they're just ads for other Dropbox features. I already pay for it — stop pretending my non-use of Paper is an "alert" worth interrupting me for. If you can't sync my folders, yes, alert me! Otherwise, shut up and do your job (sync my folders).

Expandrive has a really shit pricing/marketing.

When I switched from Linux to Mac for a while some years ago, I felt the lack of easily mounting sftp as gnome does. So I found Expandrive did that very well. $39.95 seemed a bit steep for such a simple thing, but whatever, it was working great and I paid that. Few months later came out the next version and it turned out upgrades were not included, and now it's $49.95. I thought - whatever, I'll just keep using the old version because it was working quickly and flawlessly. Then all of a sudden previous version had minor update and it started lagging and randomly disconnecting. Meanwhile they kept spamming my email about sales and offers, ~20 times since then, pitching how it's dramatically faster now etc. I can't prove they purposely fucked up the old version, but it seemed really weird when it started to have problems right after new and more expensive one came out, and I'm not planning to use it ever again.

We only email a couple times a year. And we definitely don’t silently update to a new major version. Ping support and link this thread and we can upgrade you free. Sorry for the trouble.

Glad to hear this. Dropbox is silently updating their app, and there's no way to turn this "feature" off. Yet another reason I'm looking to leave them.

I use Mega and MegaSync. It "just works" and stays out of your way. I guess they have a couple useless features (encrypted proprietary chat? do people in NZ use this?), but you don't really have to deal with them as part of the user experience.

Maybe the NZ government is spying on me that way, but the US government is probably spying on me through Dropbox. So I went with the one that offered the better user experience.

What other services like Mega are missing is third party developer support. I use a bunch of apps that work with Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud but I've never seen an option to link to a MegaSync account.

> Expandrive

How does ExpanDrive compare to AirExplorer¹? The ExpanDrive UI looks cleaner.

¹https://airexplorer.net/

It's actually rather expensive storage compared to other cloud providers.

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