Dropbox Update for Android, iOS Lets You Open Shared Links Directly Within App

Dropbox, after rolling out its Action Extension feature for iOS, has announced another feature for both its Android and iOS apps that is aimed at helping improve the productivity of users.

The cloud storage firm has introduced a new function that lets users open shared Dropbox links within the Dropbox Android and iOS apps. Previously, the shared links opened in the mobile browser, consuming more time.

"When you click on a Dropbox shared link from your mobile device, you can open the file or folder right in the Dropbox app - which means you get rich previews for documents and photos and an easy way to save the file or folder to your Dropbox account," said Henrik Berggren, Product Manager, Dropbox, on the company blog post.

Dropbox has said that after the latest update, which has already started rolling out for iOS and will reach Android soon, users will be able to directly preview documents or photos and save them within the Dropbox app. Furthermore, if the shared link file is already saved in the user's Dropbox account, the link will directly open the document so users can move, rename or favourite it for offline use.

Also, since Dropbox also supports Microsoft Office files, users can open and edit the documents directly from the Office apps (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) on both Android and iOS.

The iOS users will need to choose the 'Open in App' option to view the shared link document inside the app, while the Android users will be able to choose the 'always' feature to open the files in the Dropbox app without prompts in the future.