How to Use a Simpler, Less Intrusive Version of Dropbox
Remember when Dropbox synced your files and that’s it? Dropbox does a lot more than just sync files these days, and it wants to remind you and offer you extra services at every turn. Maestral (which I found through App Addict ) is an open source application for Linux and Mac that brings back the ability to sync only. Even better: using this app doesn’t count toward the free version’s three-device limit .
Setting up Maestral on Mac couldn’t be easier. Just download the application , install it and open it. You will be prompted to connect to your Dropbox account through your browser. You will be given a token that you can copy from there and paste back into Maestral.
You will then be asked which folder you want to store your Dropbox files in. Note that, unlike the default Dropbox app, Maestral can put your files anywhere.
You can then exclude files and folders from synchronization if you wish. Don’t worry too much about it – you can always change things later.
Maestral will then begin syncing your files. You can check the synchronization status at any time by clicking the icon in the menu bar. You can also change your local folder and selective sync settings by opening Settings, which also offers bandwidth limits.
I used it instead of the regular Dropbox client and found that it worked very well. It also takes up less space than the default client. However, something is missing. You can’t see file sync status in the Finder like you can in Dropbox, and there’s no way to right-click files to share them—you’ll have to use the web version of Dropbox to do that. None of this is a deal breaker for me, especially considering how much lighter Maestral looks compared to the official Dropbox client.
And I haven’t even mentioned the command line version of the app, which uses even fewer system resources and can be used to connect multiple Dropbox accounts to one computer. You’ll have to dig into the command line documentation to figure this out.