Create Dropbox Links from Alfred

Posted on 2017-05-16

I've always treated Alfred as a Finder replacement. The speed at which I can find and take action on files is faster than Finder.app or Spotlight will ever be able to do. Because of this, I want to have a quick and easy way to share Dropbox files from within Alfred.

Over the years, I've built version of a workflow that lets me share files with Dropbox. They've always been very specific to me and never reliable or secure enough to share with others. The Dropbox API has come a long ways and now gives me the ability to share this workflow without exposing my app secret.

This is my primary way of searching for files. I have Alfred configured so that I can hit the right arrow to take me to the actions menu.

You'll see that I have two actions set up. One for simply creating a link and another for creating a link that expires in a week. The latter is only possible if you have a Dropbox Pro account.

Once you've selected one of the options, a notification will appear telling you that the link was created and the link will then be in your clipboard.

You can download the workflow by clicking the Alfred icon below. Instructions for setting up the workflow can be found by clicking on the [x] in the top-right of the workflow once it's installed. Alfred doesn't do a great job making it easy to find the set-up instructions.

Features

• Supports multiple accounts if you have a personal and business account
• You can create any number of expiring links by creating another action and modifying the Alfred Workflow JSON expires key to a number of days
• Do to all of the different permissions that Dropbox offers for their business product, if a link already exists for the file you're trying to share with more restrictive permissions, a link won't be created. It's too difficult to expose what permissions that exist in a notification bubble.

Tags: alfred dropbox automation python