April 28, 2015April 26, 2015 by Michael Sauers

Tuesday Tech Tip: Access Dropbox from the ChromeOS File Manager

It seems that until recently, Dropbox was not available via the Chrome OS file manager. In order to use it you would need to access the Web interface. However, due to some API changes and coding by GitHub user yoichiro you can now integrate Dropbox into the file manager.

To set it up, install the File System for Dropbox and run it. On first run, you’ll be asked to provide your Dropbox credentials, and mount the drive. From that point forward, you should see Dropbox in the file manager.

Two caveats:

First, you as you move down through folders, they will not be listed on the left, only at the top. (In the screenshot I’m in /dropbox/Camera Uplaods, but I do not see that folder structure on the left as you do with Google Drive.)

Second, I seem to be unable to download content directly into Dropbox. Every attempt I have made to select a Dropbox folder as a Save As location has ended up as a failed download from the browser. Instead, I just save to the downloads folder then move the file later.

Published by Michael Sauers

Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year. View all posts by Michael Sauers

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