

Show HN: I created an app to sync any folder with Dropbox - _razvan
http://www.boxifier.com

======
_razvan
Hi there,

Razvan (author) here. I created an app to sync any folder with Dropbox. It
currently works on Windows. Haven't finished the website yet, just the app.

A little background on the app: I wanted to backup my external drives to
Dropbox for a while and tried using symlinks but those don't work for that. If
you remove the external drive, all your files will get deleted from Dropbox.
Also, you need to restart Dropbox if you make changes to the folders on the
external drive. Otherwise, they won't be synced.

I talked to my twin brother about this and he suggested building an app for
that. Having a background in Windows internals we decided to go ahead and
build it. We wanted to solve that in an elegant and effortless way, something
even our parents (who are not tech savvy) could use.

So here is Boxifier, a Windows app which installs on top of Dropbox and lets
you right click any folder and sync it to Dropbox.

I would really appreciate any feedback you might have. Thanks, Razvan

~~~
zzleeper
Great! already, subscribed.. also, two things that you can think about for the
future:

1) I have the impression that a lot of people want to share, say, git folders,
so there may actually be a huge demand for file exclusions (I think there is a
mac app for that, but nothing in windows). 2) Can I pick where in dropbox will
this be synced to? When you have 100s of GBs (or dropbox for business
accounts), your root DB folder can get very polluted, so linking to subfolders
can be useful.

Thanks again!

~~~
_razvan
1) Yes, file exclusions are definitely on our roadmap.

2) For now folders sync as subfolders of the Dropbox\Boxifier folder, but
we've been receiving this feature request so that you can pick where your
outside folders will be synced in Dropbox. This is also on our roadmap.

------
iscrewyou

      Boxifier is a third party application. 
      Some people are not comfortable giving third party applications access to their Dropbox account. 
      That’s why when building Boxifier we made an effort to make it work without needing access to your Dropbox account.
      This way you can try Boxifier with no worries.
      We also sleep better at night because of that.
    

Thank you! I'll give it a shot just for that reason alone.

~~~
garindra
I'm not sure I understand how not giving access to your Dropbox account to
Boxifier makes you that more comfortable -- Boxifier will be able to
read/write your Dropbox files anyways, what's the big difference?

~~~
_razvan
The big difference here is the principle of least privilege[1].

We could have built Boxifier so that it requires you to login into Dropbox and
get back an access token to be used by Boxifier with the Dropbox API.

If someone wanted to get access to the data in your Dropbox account, they
could do that with an access token (that they received when you authorized
their app to access your Dropbox). Then they could use that token from any
computer to download data from your Dropbox, without you ever finding out
about it.

Boxifier works completely offline so it doesn't need any network access (which
could be misused). If you want to be 101% sure you can setup a firewall rule
and block all network access for Boxifier. This way you can make sure it
cannot get data from your Dropbox folder and upload it to a remote location.

On the other hand, with an access token you have no control on how it is used
outside of your computer. You may argue that you can always revoke it, but the
reality of today's attacks is that they go stealth for a long time before you
find out about them.

We used to work in the antivirus industry so that's why we care so much about
security and privacy. Boxifier has been designed with security in mind from
its early days.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege)

------
kyriakos
This ia good effort might even force the hand of Dropbox to add a similar
feature to the official client.

I need a solution to use all the 1TB of Dropbox space available without having
to have 1TB of space on my laptop and without having to resort to use the web
interface.

~~~
_razvan
Could you please try Boxifier and let me know how it works for you? I would
appreciate it.

------
dysoco
Something that has always annoyed me about Dropbox. But honestly I'm not going
to bother given that I have to pay in order to sync more than 3 folders.
Specially when I can accomplish this with a bit of hackery and symlinks.

Nice product though.

------
xux
In before acquired by Dropbox :)

Great job! This is a much feature in Dropbox. Would be awesome if it worked on
Macs.

~~~
thatswrong0
Dropbox could have added this feature years ago but didn't, and I think the
reason they don't is for simplicity and usability for the end user, not
because they didn't think of it.

~~~
rupert_murdaaa
Selecting folders to sync seems a lot easier than copying files into a folder
whose only purpose is to sync, but I guess I don't have my finger on the pulse
of the geriatric segment.

------
bvirkler
Just curious, why only 30 minutes to try out the premium features?

~~~
_razvan
One of the reasons is that I've seen it as a common practice with other
software I used. For instance, the demo version of Traktor Pro 2 DJ-ing
software closes itself after 30 minutes.

We've also set a high quality bar for us with 30 minutes. If the product
doesn't deliver on its promise in 30 minutes then it means we need to do
better.

We chose the 30 minutes instead of making the product a 7-day or 14-day or
30-day trial because we prefer freemium to software trials. With a number of
days for you to try the software you can for instance install on day 1, go to
a business trip on day 2 and when you return on day 7 realize that the
software expired and you didn't even get the chance to try it out. With the
attention economy of today, we believe day-based software trials are broken.

With Boxifier, if you don't find the time today you can try out the premium
features again tomorrow, next week or whenever you find some free time because
the product never expires.

------
mosselman
How is this different from creating symlinks?

~~~
_razvan
1) With symlinks Dropbox doesn't sync the changes you make to those folders
until you restart it. With Boxifier, changes are synced in real-time.

2) If the target of the symlink is not available/not found then Dropbox will
delete the contents of that folder from your account. This is the case for
instance with removable drives. With Boxifier, ejecting the USB drive doesn't
cause the contents to be deleted from your Dropbox account.

3) If you use selective sync with a symlink, the contents of the target folder
willl be deleted you uncheck the folder from the selective sync settings
dialog. With Boxifier, this doesn't happen because it has built-in support for
this scenario. The folder just gets marked internally as inactive.

4) Symlinked folders lack the Dropbox overlay icons (green checkmarks, blue
circles) so you can't get an idea of what the sync progress on those folders
is. With Boxifier you have full Explorer integration so that you get the same
experience as with the Dropbox folder.

5) Symlinked folders lack the Dropbox context menu functionality. With
Boxifier you get the full Dropbox context menu functionality so you can easily
share files, get public links, see previous versions or see them on
Dropbox.com

6) A person who is not tech savvy will probably have a hard time understanding
how to use symlinks and all their shortcomings. With Boxifier you simply
right-click a folder to sync it with Dropbox. No need to be a computer wizard.

------
xname
Is there something like this for OneDrive?

------
robinhoodexe
It already exists on OS X[1], and it also works with Google Drive and a bunch
of other cloud storage providers.

[1][http://www.zibity.com/macdropany.html](http://www.zibity.com/macdropany.html)

~~~
rolfvandekrol
Which basically is a limited grafical interface for `ln -s`.

~~~
robinhoodexe
True, but it works exactly as you'd expect it to.

