I don’t recall when, exactly, I started using Dropbox. However, I apparently earned a bonus 250 MB of space by completing the “Getting Started” flow back in September of 2009. So, it’s been a minute.

At first, Dropbox was a revelation. It was the first time something synchronized with the cloud, and did so reliably. Their client apps were svelte, optimized, and worked a treat.

Over the years — mostly but not entirely because of their own choices — their client apps have become gross, bloated, overcomplicated messes.

I still rely on Dropbox to collaborate with my coworkers. However, I haven’t run one of their client apps on my computers in around five years. How?

My Synology takes care of it for me. If you happen to have a Synology NAS, you, too, can live in this eden.

The path forward is a combination of Synology Drive and Synology Cloud Sync. In short, Drive acts as a faux-Dropbox, and allows you to sync files between your devices via your own Synology. Cloud Sync then synchronizes between your Dropbox and your Drive.

1. Install Synology Drive Server on your Synology
2. Configure it… however it needs to be configured. Honestly, I haven’t done this for a decade, so, uh, Godspeed.
3. Install a Synology Drive client on your computer and verify that files are being synchronized between your computer and Synology.
4. Install Synology Cloud Sync on your Synology
5. Click the ➕ button to add a new cloud provider
6. Select Dropbox
7. Go through the authentication flow. While you do this, the key is to set your Dropbox sync folder to be within your Drive. This way, the place that Dropbox is synced to is synced to your computer via Drive
8. Delete the Dropbox client from your computer and rejoice

So, for me, my Synology’s filesystem looks like this:

~casey
   +-- ...
   +-- Drive
   |     +-- ...
   |     +-- Dropbox
   |     |      `-- (My entire Dropbox is here)
   |     `-- ...
   `-- ...

On my Mac, it looks basically the same.

So, if I were to create a new file on my Mac, and save it as

~/Drive/Dropbox/some-text-file.txt

The following will happen:

1. The Synology Drive client on my Mac will see the new file
2. That file will be uploaded to the Synology
3. Cloud Sync (running on the Synology) will see the new file within the synchronized Dropbox directory
4. Cloud Sync will upload that file to Dropbox

Thus, some-text-file.txt ends up in my Dropbox, and all I had to do was save the file on my local SSD and trust my synchronization scaffolding to take care of it.

I will say that the Synology Drive client for macOS is… not great. It’s clearly a cross-platform app, though I believe it’s using Java or some other sort of technology, rather than Electron. It’s ugly, but it works, and unlike the Dropbox client apps, it stays out of the way.

I can’t recommend this setup enough, and if you have the means Synology, I highly suggest you pick one up give it a chance.