Dropbox is a fantastic tool for everyone, from individuals to small businesses and teams. At MacStories, we use Dropbox every day. But while it is perfect for working or outsourcing important files you want to access anywhere, there is one feature in Dropbox which always bothered me: quickly creating download links to share files with friends or colleagues. Both in the Dropbox Finder window and web interface the process is just too intricate. I’ve always used other services like Droplr and CloudApp, although lately I’ve been growing tired with using multiple services for the same purpose.
Droplings, a lightweight menu bar app developed by fellow German freelance developer Carlo Zottman (developer of the Instapaper-to-Kindle sync tool Ephemera) could finally change that. Currently in beta, Droplings makes it easy to upload files to your “Public” Dropbox folder and share them afterwards.
Firstly, enter your Dropbox ID in the app’s settings. Then, just drag and drop the respective file onto the menu bar icon, and within seconds the file will be uploaded and a Droplings preview link will be in your clipboard, ready for sharing. The default preview page looks pretty nice (as you can see from the screenshots below) and the embedded download link will be based on Dropbox. By clicking on the app’s menu bar icon, you have access to the last five uploaded files, as well as the app’s Preferences, which basically just activate your Dropbox ID and offer an option to activate custom HTML templates for the preview site. Droplings is simple and fast, and, in my opinion, way better than copying files into the Dropbox Finder window and right-clicking to generate a download link.
If you miss this simplicity of sharing with Dropbox as much as I do, go ahead and try Droplings. Since it is currently in beta (v. 0.9.x), you can download it for free on the app’s website.
