How to Use a Simpler, Less Intrusive Version of Dropbox

Remember when Dropbox synced your files and that was it? These days Dropbox does a lot more than sync files and it wants to remind you—and upsell you—at every turn. Maestral (which I found via App Addict) is an open source application for Linux and Mac that brings the sync-only experience back. Even better: using this app doesn't count against the three device limit of the free version.

Setting up Maestral couldn't be easier on a Mac. Just download the application, install it, and open it. You will be asked to connect to your Dropbox account via the browser. You will be given a token which you can copy from there and paste back in Maestral.

After that you will be asked which folder you'd like to store your Dropbox files in. Note that, unlike the default Dropbox application, Maestral can put your files anywhere you want.

After that you can choose to exclude files and folders from syncing, if you want. Don't worry about this too much—you can always adjust things later.

After that Maestral will start syncing over your files. You can check the status of the syncing anytime by clicking the menu bar icon. You can also change your local folder and selective sync preference by opening the settings, which also offers bandwidth limits.

I've been using this in place of the usual Dropbox client and find that it works very well. It also has a smaller footprint than the default client. Having said that, there are a few things missing. You can't see the sync status of files in Finder, the way you can in Dropbox, and there's no way to right-click files in order to share them—you'll need to use the web version of Dropbox for that. Neither of these are deal-breakers for me, especially given how much lighter Maestral feels compared to the official Dropbox client.

And I haven't even brought up the command-line version of the application, which uses up even fewer system resources and can be used to connect multiple Dropbox accounts to the same computer. You'll have to dig into the command line documentation to figure that out.