It would be nice if that still worked. My resume exists in an iCloud drive, and I spent ten minutes on my phone trying to figure out how to attach it to a gmail message before giving up. "Copying" a file isn't even a well-defined operation anymore. (Or at least "pasting" doesn't always paste it.)
You can also just go into the files app, tap and hold, tap copy, go to Gmail tap and hold in your draft email, tap paste.
There’s other paths that work too, like hitting the “send to” logo in files and then selecting Gmail.
It’s really the exact same patterns I might use on a computer for the most part.
I assumed this was a solved problem before Windows 98 (first desktop OS I used), but Apple cannot get this right 28 years later.
With their block level syncing, Dropbox is still not really replicated in the market. I'd only take issue with their price given the volumes of data I'm dealing with.
Being able to set local and not-local flags on files/folders is great.
I spent some time trying to use a few of their alternatives, plus their mobile client apps, and it's kinda just Dropbox still.
(at least this was the ambient understanding internally when I worked there a few years ago)
Business Strategy 101 teaches that broadly speaking, there are 3 categories into which companies fall, which are cost leadership, differentiation, or segment focus.
If, as you say, your only pain point is the cost of dropbox, then any potential alternative would be competing to be the cost leader, and cost leadership strategies are unattractive for startups. Nobody is investing in early-stage companies building "a cheaper clone of XYZ". It's hard to attract startup talent to "a cheaper clone of XYZ". It's rarely fun for founders to build "a cheaper clone of XYZ".
Unfortunately I think there are limited avenues for successful differentiation in the file sync space. Self-hosted vs cloud, standalone vs OS-level integration, cross-platform vs not? Can't think of much else off the top of my head, and I think big players are able to throw shitloads of engineering talent at OS-level integration features (and that gets you iCloud, basically).
Beating dropbox at their own game wouldn't be impossible, but I think that's why there aren't many competitors in that space.
Or maybe I just click those headlines at a higher rate..
Is there anything this simple now? What I miss is being able to right click on an item, click "copy public URL", paste it into the browser, and get an exact copy of that item (with nothing else; no image overlays, no ads, nothing).
In the limit case you should be able to use it as a webhosting service for static files, since visiting an html page in a browser serves that file and relative links are preserved.
I guess it's a losing value proposition, but it sure would be nice.
It's unfortunate the original demo video was lost to time. I remember how astounding it was.
You have described Google Drive.
Put <img src="foo.jpg"> into an html file, alongside foo.jpg. In the original Dropbox, if you opened a link to the html file, you'd see a webpage that successfully rendered foo.jpg. So you could use it as a static file host.
>Our business is in a stronger position than it's been in years
>What’s energized me most since joining Dropbox is the connection people have with our brand
>It gives me a lot of confidence in what’s ahead for Dropbox
All corporate fluff, no actual content.
from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281
Other users have provided the link, but my heart sinks a little every time I see this brought up, especially when the commenter is singled out by name. People forget that this is a real person. He also happens to be a great HN contributor, and has been for many years.
I realize it's internet fun to point neon arrows at people seeming outrageously wrong in the past, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here.
When BrandonM wrote "I have a few qualms with this app", he didn't mean the software. He meant their YC application. (Note the title of Drew's post: "My YC App"). He wasn't being a petty nitpicker—he was earnestly trying to help, and you can see in how sweetly he replied to Drew there that he genuinely wanted them to succeed. We should be so lucky for all responses to "crazy new ideas" to be that decent. This community would be healthier, and actually the current thread is a standout example of how far from true it is.
The criticisms he was raising turned out to be a non-issue in hindsight, but were on point in 2007, when the idea of file synchronization was widely derided as a solution-in-search-of-a-problem which only technical users would ever care about, users who (as the comment pointed out) could already roll their own solutions. The idea had recently been publicly mocked in a famous blog post*, so it was on people's minds as the prime example of an idea only technical users would ever care about—and even YC funded Dropbox because they believed in Drew, not the idea.
* described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275
On the other hand, I can't think of a single new feature they've introduced since 2011. All I care about is packrat and good syncing. Is there anybody that loves anything they've built in the last fifteen years? I feel like the company could have had a skeleton crew keeping the lights on and I wouldn't have noticed a thing.
Now, in 2026, all I want is for my coding agent to be able to grep the files in dropbox. Feel like dropbox will sooner rely on selling merch than offering something useful like that, though.
Almost none of them had Dropbox accounts.
I found out later from someone that 90% of them couldn’t access the files. The link didn’t require a login but they made it look to the unsophisticated observer that you need an account to get the files. So these folks (most of them were elderly), just gave up.
Seeing the original HN post was an epiphany and my quality of life before/after was forever changed.
Yes there's been feature creep, yes there's been monetization but as a cross platform, standalone file syncing experience I've been a happy paying subscriber for nearly 19 years and counting!
And even despite enjoying their service, if Google Drive produced a Windows integration that actually worked well, I'd leave for it in a minute.
I'd never use OneDrive, but that's more out of spite at Microsoft shoving it at me than because it is bad in any way I know of clearly.
I'm all-in on the apple ecosystem, so while it's not perfect, iCloud storage works better. Was a shame, though.
Things have reached the point where I probably could use open sync+storage options to achieve what I do with Dropbox (and perhaps eventually I will do that as a hedge against the risks of Dropbox enshitification).
But I'd love to see Dropbox continue to provide worthy convenient service.