How to Automatically Upload to Dropbox

You probably know the Dropbox desktop app can automatically sync any file you add, but did you know Dropbox can also automatically grab photos from your phone, tablet, or camera? Here's how to do that, and how to automatically upload Gmail attachments, Instagram photos, and files from thousands of other apps.

Automatically Upload Photos From Your Phone or Camera

Your phone, your camera, your tablet—it can be hard to keep track of all of your photos and videos. Dropbox can automatically upload media from all of these devices, allowing you to organize and share them from one place. And setting it up isn't hard.

Automatically Upload Photos, Videos, and Screenshots to your Computer

Dropbox can automatically grab photos and videos every time you plug in your camera.

First, click the Dropbox icon in your system tray or menu bar. In the window that pops up, click the gear icon at top-right, then click Preferences. Here's how this looks on macOS (Windows is similar):

In the Preferences window, open the Import tab, and you'll find settings for camera uploads and screenshots.

Check Enable camera uploads, and Dropbox will automatically grab files from any camera you connect to your computer. You can optionally also enable videos. All files will show up, unsorted, in the Camera Uploads folder in your Dropbox.

Dropbox can also automatically upload screenshots. Screenshots will be added to the Screenshots folder in your Dropbox, and the URL will be automatically added to your clipboard. Here's a refresher on how to take a screenshot on various platforms.

Automatically Upload Photos, Videos, and Screenshots to Your Phone or Tablet

The best camera is the one you have with you, and that's almost always your phone. Here's how to automatically upload all of your phone's photos to Dropbox.

You'll need to install the Dropbox app on your computer, phone, or tablet. Then you need to enable the automatic uploads as described above. Open the Dropbox app on your phone, then head to the settings to find the Camera uploads option. Here's how that looks on Android; iPhone and iPad are similar.

Make sure Camera uploads is enabled, then decide if you want to include videos and whether this should use your cellular data. Every photo you take from now on will be uploaded to Dropbox, meaning you now have access to your phone's photos from anywhere you can access Dropbox.

Automatically Upload Files to Dropbox From 1,000+ Apps

Zapier can connect 1,000+ apps to Dropbox, allowing you to automatically upload all sorts of files.

For example, you could upload every Gmail attachment to a folder in Dropbox.

Or you could automatically save your new Instagram photos.

It's also possible for your Evernote attachments to automatically upload.

You could even keep any OneDrive folder in sync with a folder in your Dropbox, which is nice when someone insists on sharing using OneDrive instead of Dropbox.

The possibilities are endless, so check out our Dropbox integrations to learn more of what you can do.