1. You must be 18 to use Dropbox. Previously, you had to be 13 if in the United States, or 16 if higher. Dropbox may use information "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction."
2. Your account may be terminated if you don't have a Paid account and haven't accessed for 6 months. Previously, it was 12 months.
3. If you have multiple accounts tied to the same email address, and one is banned, the others may also be banned.
4. "Refunds are only issued if required by law." -> "Refunds are only issued in limited circumstances or if required by law."
5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account. Previously, it was only if you continued to use the service.
6. Some terms covering Teams accounts.
rpozarickij 16 minutes ago [-]
> Your account may be terminated if you don't have a Paid account and haven't accessed for 6 months
I hope file sync is treated as "access", otherwise this would make me anxious.
applfanboysbgon 26 minutes ago [-]
> 5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account.
I would really love to see courts throw this BS out.
swiftcoder 11 minutes ago [-]
I guess teenagers don't have any need to sync files, eh? Hate to see this gradual erosion of internet access for young people - I'd bet half the notable members of this very site started their career trajectory by learning how to break/fix computers in middle school or before
ta988 3 minutes ago [-]
It will simply teach them how to go around those "protections". And put them at risk of using shaddy services to do so. Exactly like what happened with the war on drugs...
iLoveOncall 4 minutes ago [-]
This has nothing to do with that. They probably realized that teenagers are a small enough portion of their userbase that the loss of revenue (and probably lack thereof to be fair) is far outweighed by the opportunity to ask users for their ID.
Why hasn't anyone created a windows and mac client that git pushes changes to remote after file activities of local computer, and polls remote repo every 1 minute for changes to pull? I'd gladly pay for that. :-)
haven't used it yet. i either back up my data with restic or sync it with syncthing, but those are tiny files (keepassxc dbs)
rlk 39 minutes ago [-]
Looks like the major changes are:
- some stuff about Teams that's mostly only relevant if you're using your work email for a personal account
- minimium age 13 -> 18; add "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction."
- free accounts may be terminated after 6 months of no use (previously 12 months)
- removed "If you reside in the EU, the European Commission provides for an online dispute resolution platform, which you can access here: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr." from the dispute resolution process.
LoganDark 11 minutes ago [-]
That last point is funny... so arbitration agreements are designed to make the process intentionally more difficult. Can't provide too many hints!
lukeify 8 minutes ago [-]
Amazing Dropbox went from a brilliantly simple service to this stagnating corporate swamp of ooze. Yet another fascinating example of how headcount correlates with quality decline.
hjkl0 18 minutes ago [-]
What’s a good Dropbox alternative? Especially for Macs. Feels like they spent twenty years just making the Mac client worse.
simongray 16 minutes ago [-]
Self-hosted Seafile + Tailscale works great for me.
LeoPanthera 8 minutes ago [-]
iCloud Drive is the obvious choice.
NietTim 8 minutes ago [-]
If you only have ios and mac clients why not icloud?
drgo 32 minutes ago [-]
I switched to Sync last year. Much cheaper, better quality.
egeozcan 18 minutes ago [-]
I didn't know about Sync. TIL someone had the guts to start a company named "Sync" in 2011.
xprnio 12 minutes ago [-]
Let that sync in
webprofusion 42 minutes ago [-]
Diff or it didn't happen
GuestFAUniverse 38 minutes ago [-]
100%
It's 2026 and they're handling IT like pariahs of the stone age.
Even they grey beards of the 70s would have worked that out easily.
dannyw 35 minutes ago [-]
Oh it's probably intentional. I've seen efforts to simplify terms of service get rejected because "more people might read it if it's shorter".
nixass 40 minutes ago [-]
Well, diff it then?
GuestFAUniverse 36 minutes ago [-]
(I'm a former user of dropbox.)
Good services make change explicit.
Dropbox seems to have degraded into incompetence. Unable to provide good services.
adrithmetiqa 24 minutes ago [-]
Long time Dropbox user here. I would disagree. In my opinion they still have the best file sync platform of the big providers, easily beating onedrive and Google drive for reliability, especially with hundreds of thousands of files.
peri-cl 5 minutes ago [-]
curl and ftp never refuse to work, or willfully erase your backup files. Just saying.
40 minutes ago [-]
10 minutes ago [-]
xtoilette 52 minutes ago [-]
TL;DR?
charcircuit 41 minutes ago [-]
- You must be 18+
- You must access Dropbox every 6 months (from 12) if you have a free to ensure they don't delete your account
chrisandchris 41 minutes ago [-]
I did a comparison with an LLM of my choice and there was no meaningful difference (or nothing I would consider HN-worthy).
sph 35 minutes ago [-]
Given the HN-worthy differences posted by others, here’s another example of why it’s not a good idea to delegate your thinking to LLMs.
kenferry 11 minutes ago [-]
I… guess? I'm not sure why this was posted. None of these changes seem important.
There's at least 10 other accounts who do the same
catoc 6 minutes ago [-]
This account has 50 submissions in the last two hours!
[Edit: not the parent; the posting account]
I don’t know why GP’s comment was flagged because submitting at a rate of 25 submissions PER HOUR is not done out of a genuine desire to share something that may be of interest to fellow human beings. Not even for personal bookmarking
baxtr 27 minutes ago [-]
Or: they use it as their personal bookmarking tool
Rendered at 07:56:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
1. You must be 18 to use Dropbox. Previously, you had to be 13 if in the United States, or 16 if higher. Dropbox may use information "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction."
2. Your account may be terminated if you don't have a Paid account and haven't accessed for 6 months. Previously, it was 12 months.
3. If you have multiple accounts tied to the same email address, and one is banned, the others may also be banned.
4. "Refunds are only issued if required by law." -> "Refunds are only issued in limited circumstances or if required by law."
5. You automatically agree to the new terms if you continue to have an account. Previously, it was only if you continued to use the service.
6. Some terms covering Teams accounts.
I hope file sync is treated as "access", otherwise this would make me anxious.
I would really love to see courts throw this BS out.
https://www.diffchecker.com/QD8AKShC/
haven't used it yet. i either back up my data with restic or sync it with syncthing, but those are tiny files (keepassxc dbs)
- some stuff about Teams that's mostly only relevant if you're using your work email for a personal account
- minimium age 13 -> 18; add "Dropbox may use and rely on information from third parties, including age signals from app stores, for the purpose of enforcing this restriction."
- free accounts may be terminated after 6 months of no use (previously 12 months)
- removed "If you reside in the EU, the European Commission provides for an online dispute resolution platform, which you can access here: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr." from the dispute resolution process.
It's 2026 and they're handling IT like pariahs of the stone age.
Even they grey beards of the 70s would have worked that out easily.
Good services make change explicit.
Dropbox seems to have degraded into incompetence. Unable to provide good services.
- You must access Dropbox every 6 months (from 12) if you have a free to ensure they don't delete your account
I don’t know why GP’s comment was flagged because submitting at a rate of 25 submissions PER HOUR is not done out of a genuine desire to share something that may be of interest to fellow human beings. Not even for personal bookmarking