Dropbox Mobile Offline Folders Launched for Android Users

Dropbox on Wednesday announced a new feature that lets users save folders for offline viewing on a mobile device. The all-new feature will be available to Dropbox Pro, Dropbox Business, and Dropbox Enterprise users on the latest version of Dropbox for Android over the next few days. The company says that the offline feature will be soon arriving on iOS devices early next year. Dropbox and its competitors, such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, already offered offline file features, however, the company says it is the first major service to offer offline features for entire folders.

In a blog post, Dropbox claims that the offline folder was one of the top requested features from users. With the new mobile offline folders, users can tag an entire folder to access its contents automatically synced to the smartphone or tablet with no additional need to mark individual files for download.

With the new offline feature, premium Dropbox users on Android can make changes to the folder while offline and this will be synced to the Dropbox account once they are online.

"Mobile offline folders not only help minimize downtime during commutes and traveling days, they also make it easier for admins to communicate with the entire team. Now, everyone in the office and in the field can stay on the same page and know they're working with the latest documents," said Dropbox team in a blog post.

To make folders available for offline viewing, Dropbox Pro, Dropbox Business, and Dropbox Enterprise users will have to add the folder to the Offline view for access and save it to the Android device for offline viewing within Dropbox. The app however will need offline folder to be manually updated to keep as up-to-date as possible.

To make folders available for offline viewing from the Android app, users will have to browse to the folder that is needed to be available for offline viewing. Users from the folder list can tap the downward arrow to the right of the folder name and toggle the switch to make the folder available offline. Once folder is available offline and is downloaded to the Android device, users can access it any time.