« Downloading Movies from Dropbox »
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 When you upload a QuickTime or other movie file to Dropbox, and then get the “public link” to give to someone else, Dropbox does a really cool thing and redirects the original movie file link to deliver a very simple web page with the movie embedded in it instead. Which looks great in a browser if you just need to view a quick clip — but what if you actually intended for the link to be a download instead?
It turns out the trick is a little obscure, but fairly simple. All you need to do is add ?&dl=1 to the end of the “public link” URL. So:
http://files.getdropbox.com/.../movie.mov
becomes instead:
http://files.getdropbox.com/.../movie.mov?dl=1
Once you do that, Dropbox forces the download link, and the movie will download instead of playing in your browser.
Reader Comments (2)
thanks for this but my link looks like this https://dl-web.getdropbox.com/get/sharedfoldername/moviename.mov?w=901fd66f
I think the difference is that you are talking about public links and I have a shared folder. I have tried fixing the first part of the link and the last part like you have shown but I get to a page that says I don't belong there. Any ideas, short of getting the original sender to send a public link, or reup in a zip file?
thanks
I was talking about public links, yes.
If you have a shared folder, I would think it should show up in your Dropbox, and you could just access it at a file level with the Dropbox app for your operating system. That's how it works for me anyway. (Please note, I am not Dropbox Tech Support.)