Tuesday 18 October 2016

How to download large folders on dropbox

Recently, someone shared a large folder with me and when I tried to download it, I was getting an error; "There was an error downloading your file".
This error seemed very vague and after a quick search online, I figured out that it is not possible to download folders which are bigger than 1 GB.  And according to dropbox's help article, I will be able to download it only if I add it to my dropbox. With dropbox's puny 2GB free storage it was not possible and I was not ready to spend $$$ just for this. 
So, I wrote a simple script in javascript that I can run it on browser console to download all files in a folder!

How to do it?


Step 1. Navigate to the dropbox folder on the browser and open your developer console. Press   cmd + j  on mac or  ctrl + shift + j  on linux and windows.

Step 2. Paste the following code in the console.



Step 3. The browser will try to block the windows trying to download it. Select the option to  Always allow pop-ups from https://www.dropbox.com . For instance this is how it will look on Google Chrome (you have to click on right most icon in the search bar).


Step 4. Your files will be downloaded one by one!

NOTE: If any folder inside the folder is greater than 1GB in size, then you may have to do the same process after navigating to that folder in the browser.

Update: Make sure that you use the list view to see files by clicking on this:

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