5 Cool Apps That Make Dropbox Even More Useful

Dropbox, if you don't know about it yet, is an excellent synchronization tool. In fact it is one of our favorite tools to sync and backup files and other important data. Dropbox can seamlessly sync your files across multiple computers and also provides features like shared and public folders allowing you to share/sync only the content you want to be synced with the other computer.

Out of the box Dropbox works really well with support for Windows, Mac and Linux. The default functionality, however leaves a lot to be desired. For instance you can only sync files and folders that are contained within the My Dropbox folder.

Here we present some useful dropbox downloads – software tools and applications that you can use alongside Dropbox to make it even more useful. Some of them fill the voids left by the out of box functionality while some of them take Dropbox to a whole new level, using it for things far beyond synchronization.

Junction, SyncToy, Conduit

All of these Dropbox downloads fall in roughly the same category. They help you keep two folders in sync. So why would you need any one of these when you are already using Dropbox? Well, because you can use them to sync folders via Dropbox that are outside the My Dropbox folder for your account.

While all of these applications are fantastic, I must point out that you can use the mklink command on Windows and the ln command on Linux to create links to external folders from within the My Dropbox folder

Dropbox Portable / Dropbox U3

Both these Dropbox application downloads or add-ons serve the same purpose. They let you install and use Dropbox from your USB flash drive. Dropbox U3 is specially made for U3 Smart flash drives.

All you need to do is to unzip or install onto your Flash drive and you are set to use Dropbox with your flash drive. So now you can keep your pen drive data synced and backed up to the cloud easily!

MailDrop

MailDrop is one of my personal favorites. It lets you add files to your Dropbox using nothing but email. Here is how it works: it checks your mail account via IMAP. Any mail inside the Dropbox folder (label in Gmail speak) is checked for attachments and those attachments are uploaded to your Dropbox.

You will of course be required to provide your mail credentials so that MailDrop can access your account via IMAP. MailDrop's developer says that the email credentials are only used locally by MailDrop and you need not provide your Dropbox credentials.

Dropbox Copy Plugin

The Copy Plugin lets you copy or move files to your Dropbox folder via the right click context menu. It then copies the Dropbox public link on to the clipboard so you can share in a snap.

Akira

The Akira Dropbox download can let you control certain aspects of a remote machine via commands using nothing but Dropbox as the conduit. You can do tasks like running an application or shutting down the remote computer using Akira. While it cannot replace remote desktop or ssh login into a Linux machine, Akira provides a good basic set of commands that are pretty useful and easy to remember and use at the same time.

MakeUseOf has written a lot about Dropbox in the past.   Here's a small selection :

3 Reasons Why Students Should Be Using Dropbox
How To Run Multiple Dropbox Accounts Simultaneously [Mac]
4 Unique and Cool Ways To Use Dropbox

Do you use any other Dropbox downloads or custom scripts to make Dropbox even more useful? Let us know about them in comments!