I find that Dropbox shared links are filled with unnecessary distractions 99% of the time. When I share a link to a file, I want only that file to be returned. This also has the advantage that you can hot-link images directly.
This service is a macOS daemon that sits in the background, observing pasteboard changes, and when it finds a Dropbox shared link, it fixes the link to make it a direct link. It has some smarts as well to handle capture.dropbox.com, not convert folder links, and convert links to a direct URL for supported file types.
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For example, it turns this URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jg60xxxxxxxx/Some_Image.jpg?dl=0 -
Into this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/jg60xxxxxxxx/Some_Image.jpg, which returns the content directly -
It also converts Dropbox Capture links like this:
https://capture.dropbox.com/l8FJm9RzOxJqDF5j -
Into this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/l2tnc8hm1uyiaq3/Screen%20Shot%202024-05-09%20at%202.49.16%E2%80%AFPM.png
- Make sure you have Python 3.6 or later installed on your macOS system.
- Clone this repository or download the
dropbox-url-swap.pyfile. - In a terminal navigate to the directory where the
dropbox-url-swap.pyfile is located. - Run the following command to start the daemon:
python dropbox-url-swap.py - The daemon will now run in your terminal, monitoring your clipboard for Dropbox shared links and automatically fixing them.
Note: The daemon requires the AppKit module, which is specific to macOS. Make sure you have the necessary dependencies installed.
- Instructions for turning this into a macOS launchd service so that it always runs automatically.
Fun Fact: The reason why all Dropbox shared links have '?dl=0' at the end is hilarious. It has no effect, since dl defaults to 0. It was added as a quick hack to fix an issue with older versions of Microsoft Word assuming a URL's extension matches the file's type. Now it's returned forever on every Dropbox shared link and would no doubt be a pain to remove.