Can iCloud replace Dropbox?

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Hello!

My first post here on the forum, but I've been using iPhones for a few years (since the 3), and recently switched over from Windows 8 to OS X on a MBP13 a little more than half a year ago.

As a photographer, one of my favorite uses for DropBox is throwing a file full of like 1GB of photos for my friends to see, then just emailing them the link so they can all log in and see it.

I've been playing around with the new Photos app on OS X, as well as the iCloud Drive on IOS9, but the closest I've found is the following:
Finder > iCloud Drive > right click on folder and click on "Share". But this just zips and literally sends the entire folder to the recipient, rather than inviting them to view them on the cloud without actually downloading anything. Sending 1GB of pics and asking someone to download the whole folder is a bit of a pain, and it takes loads of time too.

A secondary question is that I can't see my pics when I open iCloud Drive on my iPad or iPhone....any way to actually see the pics?

Any better options?
Thanks in advance!
 

vansmith

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I've been playing around with the new Photos app on OS X, as well as the iCloud Drive on IOS9, but the closest I've found is the following:
Finder > iCloud Drive > right click on folder and click on "Share". But this just zips and literally sends the entire folder to the recipient, rather than inviting them to view them on the cloud without actually downloading anything. Sending 1GB of pics and asking someone to download the whole folder is a bit of a pain, and it takes loads of time too.
Here's a guide that might help.

A secondary question is that I can't see my pics when I open iCloud Drive on my iPad or iPhone....any way to actually see the pics?
If you're talking about the iCloud Drive app, that's not really what it's for. If you want to see the photos, you're better off using the Photos app. Just make sure iCloud Photo Library is enabled in Settings on all the devices that you want to view photos on.
 
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Here's a guide that might help.

If you're talking about the iCloud Drive app, that's not really what it's for. If you want to see the photos, you're better off using the Photos app. Just make sure iCloud Photo Library is enabled in Settings on all the devices that you want to view photos on.

Thanks so much for the helpful feedback.

Just followed the directions on the Apple site you sent me, and I was able to invite my friend to view my pictures using Photos, but he wasn't able to view them from his Android phone. It said "iCloud can't find this page" when he tried to open it. Does this mean I did something wrong, or does it mean DropBox wins?
 

Rod


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I think DropBox is hard to beat for file sharing across platforms and formats.
 

vansmith

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I can't speak to why your friend was unable to use it but the easiest solution to cross-platform issues is to use services that play nice across platforms. Using something like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive might be the best option if you don't want to fiddle with cross-platform tweaks (I use OneDrive to share pictures with people, for example, and it works wonderfully). I know that's not really an answer to the issue but it might truly be easiest to just go with what works.
 

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