Speed Up Dropbox’s File Syncing With A Simple Tweak


File-syncing service Dropbox is magical — even if it’s got a fresh new competitor. It syncs files between your computers and the web hassle-free… except when the file’s taking too long to sync. If you’ve ever stared impatiently at Dropbox, waiting for a file to sync, there’s likely an easy solution.

By default, Dropbox automatically limits your file upload speeds, presumably to avoid eating up too much of your bandwidth at one time. That’s nice of them, but the automatic upload rate wasn’t running nearly as fast as I’d wanted, which meant large files were taking forever to sync. The fix is simple:

On Windows, Click Dropbox in the system tray, then Preferences > Bandwidth; on Mac, click Dropbox in the menu bar, then Preferences > Network > Bandwidth > Change Settings. Once there, change your Upload rate to “Don’t limit”, or if you’re familiar with your network’s upload bandwidth and want to exercise a little more control, pick an upload limit that you’re comfortable with in the Limit to field.

You can likewise tweak your download speeds if you so please. It’s a small, simple tweak, but if you’ve been unhappy with your Dropbox syncing speed, it could make all the difference.


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