Desktop

Download and install the desktop client on your PC or laptop and Dropbox will automatically create a Dropbox folder so you can easily add, edit and delete files from your Dropbox account.

Your files will automatically sync to your account and one awesome feature is if you right click a file you can see the version history (every save you made) of that file.

Mobile

Installing the mobile app on your tablet or phone and logging into your account will let you see your files stored in your Dropbox folder.

A nice feature of the mobile app is the automatic backup of your photos to your Dropbox photo folder. However, be warned that you will more than likely burn through your free 2GB of storage space pretty quickly with this enabled. Fear not, however, there is a much nicer solution if you’re looking to automatically back up your photos to the cloud.

Get more free space!

There are loads of handy guides online which walk you through getting more space for free on your Dropbox account. In fact, Dropbox itself will walk you through the steps to increase your storage for free.

Some simple steps are connecting services like Facebook and Twitter, following Dropbox on Twitter and giving Dropbox some feedback. Doing all of that will earn you an extra 250MB of space. You can complete the getting started tour for another easy 250MB.

Referring others

This is the big one. You can earn up to a whopping 16GB of free space just by getting others to signup to Dropbox. Each new user you get will give you another 500MB of space.

But… I only have 2 friends…

Don’t worry! A little known trick is that you can do this all from your own email address.

Some email providers allow extra characters in their email addresses such as “+” and a lot of services will recognise this as a unique email address. The best part is that the emails will still go to your email address. Anything after the extra character is ignored by the email provider.

Simply put, it means that you can do something like this:

Normal email: BillyNoMates@gmail.com

Alternate email 1: BillyNoMates+Dropbox1@gmail.com

Alternate email 2: BillyNoMates+Dropbox2@gmail.com

Alternate email 3: BillyNoMates+Dropbox3@gmail.com

Alternate email 4: BillyNoMates+Dropbox4@gmail.com

Alternate email 5: BillyNoMates+Dropbox5@gmail.com

And so on…

I hope this helps and if you have any questions or suggestions, please comment below.

Step 1

Download and install the app.

Step 2

Log in to your Google account.

Step 3

Go to settings and make sure that you have selected the “High quality (free unlimited storage)” option*.

Step 4

On your app settings go to “Backup & Sync” and turn it on.

Step 4 and a bit

Have a little look at the “When to back up” settings too and set them to your preferences.

Step 5

Watch in amazement as your photos are automatically backed up as you take them.

Hopefully this article helps you out. Let me know in the comments if there’s anything I’ve missed or if you know of a better solution.

_{* This option does compress your images a bit (not noticeable) but if you’re planning on backing up RAW images or huge resolution images then this option probably isn’t for you. Then again, you probably have your own backup systems in place.}