Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation
help.dropbox.com
help.dropbox.com
Dropbox bought Hackpad and launched Dropbox Paper a decade ago!
Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then — and had a good internal product team behind it, but leadership failed to see the potential. I think it's because the Dropbox founders were so consumer-focused that they couldn't envision how huge Paper could be in the productivity tools space. They kept framing it as an Evernote competitor, instead of seeing it turning into something like Notion.
Even when they finally seemed to understand that Dropbox was never going to be a B2C sensation, they kept acquiring "side product" businesses instead of ones that built on Dropbox's existing value. (To their credit, this was the zeitgeist back when they started — B2B was not cool at all, and the sort of B2C/B hybrid that exists now wasn't a thing.)
Meanwhile startups like Notion actually saw the opportunity and blossomed. And nowadays, even super-slow Google is releasing features like pageless mode, markdown support, etc. Such that Paper is almost irrelevant at this point, despite having had such a massive head start.
It's sad because I can easily imagine an alternate future where Dropbox understood what Paper could be, and invested in it alongside things like an Airtable competitor, to create a truly viable, and forward-looking alternative to Google Docs/Sheets/Drive, without all the baggage of being a Microsoft Office clone.
Never, ever used any additional Dropbox services. All I need it to do is be a reliable cloud storage. Nothing else.
Block based syncing.
It's such a shame, because I absolutely believe that simpler products which focus on one thing and do it well are basically always a better user experience (and I personally try to use them wherever possible). But I think the business case is hard.
The changelog states: "Added support for “differential” uploads. When large files are edited, Drive for desktop will now upload only the parts of the file that changed."
I do not enjoy it at all, and I hope Obsidian eats their lunch.
Performance aside, it's crazy that in the age of Claude Code people don't insist on having their docs local, private, and in markdown.
[0] https://relay.md
There's no question that Paper is a better pure writing experience. If you're viewing Notion as just a note-taking app and nothing else, I think you're misunderstanding what it's for.
For starters, it's way easier to organize stuff in Notion than Paper. This is less a feature of Notion, and more of a terrible limitation of Paper. Paper was stuck with the "files within folders" model. Just the fact that Notion lets you control what shows up in the navigation sidebar was a huge time saver for me. And being able to create pages within pages within pages (which is very different from having sibling documents inside a folder) made it much more flexible for organizing everything.
But the real power of Notion is when you start to treat it as a database builder rather than a note-taking tool. Yes, it's useful for taking notes, but those notes are about something, and with tools like Paper, Obsidian, etc., the thing is always living somewhere else.
With Notion, I was able to make a database of projects and another database of tasks which linked to those projects. Each developer on my team has a custom dashboard showing just the tasks that are assigned to them and currently in-progress. I have a totally different view showing all the projects going on right now. And then each of those tasks have a pretty good (I admit it's not great) note-taking feature. The notes are living within the actual object you're taking notes about, which is totally different from Paper.
I even use Notion for personal stuff. I have a Notion form that my wife and I use to enter things we need to buy next time we're at the store. And there's a view showing the things we need to buy from each separate store with checkboxes next to each one so it's easy to remove them when we're done. There's a separate database listing the movies we want to watch, with a view for all the ones we previously watched, and when. I have a database of cocktail recipes along with ingredient lists (so I can easily filter by ingredient), formulas to calculate different volumes based on how many drinks you're making, a rating system, etc.
Basically, if you look at Notion as a bucket of unstructured notes with a markdown editor, I agree, it's nothing special. But that's not what it really is.
I agree with a folder that syncs. Today I use dropbox, but I do my best to avoid interacting with it, because just clicking on the menubar icon makes me upset that no feature there is what I actually need. No sensible ignore rules, etc.
But I could have been wrong and focusing on dropbox was not the only path. But even if it wasn't, they fumbled every promising product they could. I mean, Mailbox, they pioneered (read acquired) the email swipe UX, then killed it.
Then there was that launch where they hyped some iCloud sync service that would allow apps to store settings and game states, etc. Whatever happened to that?
Today I'm so afraid that dropbox's more daring products will die faster than Google can retire theirs, that I simply do not use it for anything other than a folder than syncs where I can share links. And now that I think about it, it's been a while since I had to share a single link, so maybe I can just move to synching.
What does this mean? I used Box once in about 2011 at work (before Google and MS got serious with their "Drive" features my company had paid for Box) and my impression was actually "this is like if Dropbox were built by Oracle" -- worse than Dropbox in every way, both usability and performance, but with some corporate-tailored features. As a consumer, I would never have dreamed of switching to Box.
So that's why I'm curious what you mean by the comment with respect to B2C.
It’s fast. It’s way more reliable than iCloud, and for “simply” keeping folders in sync just “simply” the best - for simple user requirements simplicity and reliability are key. Did I stress ‘simple’ enough? Maybe I should stress it Latin? Simplex veri sigillum.
I hope they stick to their core business.
"Thanks for sharing a file, ianstormtaylor, Dropbox for Business will do some bullshit"
Dropbox was a great product, but a shit company. They have a software platform and core technology that for B2B would readily displace high dollar stuff like managed file transfer and had a good early API that many apps took advantage of. I had a great experience working with them to capture shadow IT use of the product and get it in a managed environment.
But the relentless nagging, even of paying customers, is unserious and stupid. I wouldn't touch the product with a 10 foot pole.
Except that you had to have everyone use a Dropbox account. So if you are already in bed with Google as a company, adding Dropbox for everyone might not be such a fun idea.
Integration was not perfect, but it does create a json .paper file containing a url. But at least it makes you aware the doc exists every time you look at the folder.
Alas, with Paper desktop & mobile apps being deprecated, that's increasingly useless :-( Will the main app at least take over the ability to [double-]click these .paper docs to open them in a browser?
Would be stupid to rely on them for anything other than basic file storage at this point.
It should be obvious that "a whole collaborative office suite" is not the kind of thing a regular company can build as an extension play... but somehow some manager inside Dropbox convinced them that direction was possible. At least for a while. Seems they've gradually come to their senses.
1. App integration (3rd parties can access to a single folder in your Dropbox, allowing "purchase to Dropbox" directly. Many merchants automatically update the files if they receive updates, too.
2. Auto OCR, incl. handwriting. My old comics which are not English are OCRd, and I can do full-text search inside them, which is very useful for me.
3. Fast, auto transcription in many languages. I needed a transcription of a file recently. All services needed memberships, etc. I did it from Google cloud API toolbox. However when I uploaded the the same file to Dropbox, I saw a transcription button. It produced equally good results in way less time.
4. Send-a-copy (aka Transfer). I don't want to share and try to remember to disable links. My Dropbox membership contains a complete "WeTransfer" replacement, and I use it a lot.
5. Request files. I open a link, people send in the files I need, then the "dropbox" closes automatically. I get notifications for uploads, too.
6. Funnily, a working Linux client.
...and possibly more I don't use or can't remember right now.
I don't know how it is these days, wouldn't be surprised if other commercial services still haven't figured it out.
I also overstayed with Dropbox for that reason, and now I don't see a real reason for their higher $/GB. Though their client is more stable than Google Drive from my experience (which randomly stops working on Windows often enough), OneDrive has been rock solid for me on both Windows and macOS.
Koofr is a decent cloud solution. Their client is horrendous across all platforms and lacks the most basic functionalities.
You can argue OneDrive / GoogleDrive are semi decent if you also use insync, which adds another license to purchase when a basic client should come free with the service you've already bought.
And no, rsync doesn't come even close to it in terms of functionality/simplicity, no matter how much hardened Linux users who haven't been outside since 1988 are trying to convince everyone otherwise.
It's not suitable to store anything that sensitive, but for regular stuff, they are becoming a powerhouse, and the web app allows you to work very efficiently and fast.
I personally like Dropbox, and don't find the direction they're heading ill-advised.
The thing is, its hard to have a product thats important to you and does cool things but also you don't rely on for anything crucial. Esp when its file storage.
Crucial and sensitive are different things. I trust them with the files I actively and regularly use, but I don't trust them with anything that needs encryption, which is a tiny sliver of what I have in terms of files.
Keeping things backed up is an entirely different conversation, though.
It seemed that they were not allocating any resources to the project.
I did check back every year or so for entertainment purposes. Mine was migrated in November of 2024.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200615075409/https://www.dropb...
If I go to paper.dropbox.com, I only see six under "starred" in the left hand side (after unfolding the tree) and two in the main area. After opening another starred one, which links into dropbox, the main area now shows three.
So the migration to dropbox did mostly work for me, but whatever was left at paper.dropbox.com is messed up.
Ironically I stopped using Dropbox when they started trying to branch out into all the other stuff. I doubt I'll go back at this point though.
Oh that's great! I currently use OneDrive because of Personal Vault (and other smaller reasons), because no one else offered something like it. I didn't even know about Vault, but I guess that's for the better because I wouldn't want the folder holding my ID etc. becoming accessible to every single app connected to my Dropbox.
There had to have been a better way to discontinue it. Even making the folder require migration on next access would've been better than silently worsening it.
I would love for them to implement:
- The ability to exclude folders from syncing - useful for .venv etc
- The ability to sync folders outside of the dropbox folder
- Instant hosting by sharing a link pointing to a folder with an index.html
https://maestral.app/docs/mignore
I’ve been loving Maestral so far, it’s just the syncing, none of the other stuff. It has some downsides (it can’t upload symlinks but it can download them, and it doesn’t have LAN sync) but it’s super lightweight.
I have Maestral (and rclone) running on my raspbi but wouldn’t use it for things like sparsebundle syncing
If you mean differential sync (or "delta sync"), Google Drive added it this year and OneDrive added it a few years ago. Google Drive's client is much worse than Dropbox's, though, with it just randomly breaking on Windows often. I've had good experiences with OneDrive on Windows & macOS, though.
I made a plugin that make this possible from the Filestash client (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash). If you navigate to /public/{shareID}/ you will see your site
If they provide a better web experience I'm all for this.
I get what they're doing... unifying everything into one system. I get it. But I can't find any of my docs anymore. When I go to paper.dropbox.com, where there use to be thousands of docs, there's now nothing.
The app wasn't great, but it was better than nothing.
I wrote to support and they told me there’s nothing they can do.
(And even if the docs were in it… now I’m a few clicks away from my docs which is way worse than before.)
B2C was lost to them the minute Google Drive and iCloud Drive both got decent enough. Clearly with all their random acquisitions and stuff they were trying to become a #3 to MS and Google for corporate, but it's such a moat to penetrate, since they'd have to become at least a little better than at least one of them at most of the big productivity things (email, calendar, documents & drive, chat, meetings), or be a lot better at one specific thing, enough that businesses will have an appetite to keep paying for GOOG/MS's bundles and add-on additional cost to pay for Dropbox too. If I had to vote for a company least likely to succeed I'd pick Dropbox, and that's without any shade to the people running it. They're just in a terrible market position.
That is testament how good and easy their storage offering is to use. This is where I've previously failed to convince the same group of people to use Google Drive / OneDrive.
I recall on one earnings call Drew mentioned they launched Passwords. I checked it out and was shocked how completely broken and unusable it was. Never used it again and eventually it was discontinued.
The new thing they are pushing is Dash, their universal search. It makes a lot of sense, but their progress is very slow and I'm not sure they are able to compete, even though they have some distribution advantage.
The one thing that seems to be working for them is being lean and more efficient. In the last few years they laid off people and improved their margins and cash flows. They couldn't innovate their product so went the other way of let's just squeeze as much money from what we already have.
Why Dropbox doesn’t offer features adjacent to sync, like: end to end encryption for consumers, backup solutions like backblaze, S3-like buckets, controls like with S3 (like those related to IAM), tools to monitor folders and see analytics, flexible storage plans, equivalent of the Firefox/Bitwarden send, equivalent of services like ProtonDrive, and stop locking down ordinary features behind additional payment wall (even in paid plans, like using your available storage with more than one user for security and for defining scope for each device). My Dropbox Plus $120/year offers a fraction of what my managed nextcloud provides.
If you pay Dropbox 10$/month, you can’t set a damn password or expiry date to the file that you share. You have to pay even more for this simple feature.
Their password manager is limited to 50 passwords in their free plan. What these people are thinking?
They won't last.
Their export feature has been broken for over a year. Support hasn't helped, and our data is still trapped.
A sad end for a once promising product.
It's odd that every software must sufficiently be for everyone, or bust.
- got rid of Public folder support, in spite of user outcry (https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101001014/ending-su...)
- re-wrote the software in such a way that files are temporarily locked right after they get written / modified (intermittently breaking utilities like VSO Image Resizer)
- made it increasingly difficult or impossible to deliberately remove the green checkmark overlay icons (used to be an easy Windows registry hack, now the software goes through all kinds of hoops to fight you and restore the way they want it)
- IIRC for a while they introduced AI feature default settings that would hoover up your document contents without consent (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropb...)
For a while, I could edit “paper files” that other team members created, and I could create paper docs on the old version (to the utter confusion of my team members), but I couldn’t create new paper files without duplicating a team member’s doc and deleting the content.
Now when I visit paper.Dropbox.com, all of my “old paper” docs are completely missing and I see an empty list (of what I presume are old-style docs.) :( I have local backups, but like, what’s the point of maintaining two separate services with the same name for five years?
Edit: Apparently my account was migrated in December 2024. I don’t know why the old interface is still accessible to me. A redirect or a message like “Check your ‘Migrated Paper Docs’ folder” would go a long way instead of showing an hauntingly empty list.
(I’m a very early user, signed up before 2008, have 3TB of free lifetime storage from referrals and internship bonuses)
I thought I had it lucky with my measly 25GB of lifetime storage. Have been using Dropbox for free for well over a decade – I would pay but their entry level plan far exceeds what I need.
Why are they killing the app?
Cutting the maintenance cost I guess.