DerekAllard.com

Automatic screenshot sharing via DropBox on a Mac

A new small Mac app has been getting a bit of attention lately called TinyGrab. Its function is really straight-forward; it intercepts screen grabs you make and uploads them to its webserver for public sharing. Very nice little idea actually, and whenever I’ve needed to solve this task I’ve just used DropBox, which I am absolutely in love with (my DropBox referral link if you don’t have a free account yet).

So I got thinking, how can I automate this for my needs? First of all, I don’t want all my screenshots going up to DropBox, but I do want the ability to easily add them. A right-click option to “Send to DropBox” would be perfect. 10 seconds of Googling reveals Post to Dropbox Service by Oliver Stengele. It does exactly what I wanted… and why I hadn’t thought of looking for it before today is beyond me.

I made some quick adjustments; since I always wanted these sent to a subfolder called “Screenshots” I simply created it inside my Public DropBox folder.

Screenshots folder in Public DropBox

Addendum: I had a note here about changing your dropbox id to include “/screenshots” after it, but that isn’t needed with the new workflow files.

After the files are downloaded (there are 2 *.workflow files included, just move them into ~/Library/Services/) you’ll need to edit them to include your user id. This is where the path for DropBox comes from, so instead of making mine:

dropbox_id = '906310' 

Make it:

dropbox_id = 'whatever your dropbox id is' 

Addendum: I also changed the “Copy Finder Items” folder to “screenshots” in Automator. If you want to save yourself the trouble, here are my revised scripts (DropBox_tools.zip).  Please note that you must change the “dropbox_id” line above in each to get it working. Do do that, just double-click on the workflow and it’ll open in automator. Then edit away!

And now anytime I’m ready to share a screenshot, I right click it and it is automatically moved into DropBox for me, and the URL is automagically copied to my clipboard.

Right-click context menu to send a file to DropBox

Handy!

 

This entry was made on and filed into Mac.

Comments

Rui Andrada wrote on

Good tip.
I’ll do on my linux machine soon…

thanks.

macpug wrote on

Sweet tip!  Thanks! 

I see this being VERY handy (not to mention timely) since Tiny Grab was in the free MacHeist nanobundle released yesterday and they’re trying to get 500,000 downloads (for marketing of course). I’m a DropBox lover, as are many of my buddies, so I will retweet your super find.

No need adding extra apps when one we’re using for lots of other things fits the bill perfectly!

Cheers!!

Burton Kent wrote on

Try JingProject.com for exactly the same functionality.  It’s probably even easier to use, and you can configure where it’ll FTP things to.

clark wrote on

I love Dropbox, also use ubuntuone on my ubuntu desktop so
2+2 =4Gb space

Benjamin David wrote on

Hi Derek and thanks for sharing. I’ve been using Dropbox for a few weeks and I find new ways to use it everyday.

It would be perfect if the script could use the page title as a name for the file. I’ve been playing with Paparazzi (screenshots fullpage) and Automator, and I think with some AppleScript, it should be possible to do something like this.

And then right click, move to Dropbox, and that’s it. It would be perfect :)

I’ll tell you if I manage to do this title filename thing, cheers !

Benjamin David wrote on

Oh, and LittleSnapper does a great job too in the screenshots world :
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/

But I still like better the flexibility of Dropbox.

Kamran wrote on

Nice tip, I will use it.
Thanks

Daniel Craig Jallits wrote on

Probably should be said that this requires Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Gry planszowe wrote on

Thanks for useful post. I’m the owner of Mac for 2 weeks and I’m still learnig how to fully use this computer.