How to force a shared link to download or render

Updated Jun 30, 2025

The information in this article applies to all Dropbox users.

You can make simple edits to Dropbox links to share files the way you want. You can also append the link URL to force the content to download or render in your browser.

How to force a Dropbox link to download

To force a browser to download the contents of a link rather than display them, you can use "dl=1" as a query parameter in your URL. For example:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a1b2c3d4ef5gh6/example.docx?dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/<token.a>/file.jpg?rlkey=<token.b>&dl=1

Note: The original shared link URL may contain query string parameters already (for example, dl=0). App developers should be sure to properly parse the URL and add or modify parameters as needed. The links may also redirect to *.dropbox.com/s/dl.

How to force render a file in a browser

Some browsers aren't configured to correctly preview files. While certain file types can be downloaded instead of opened, others—like HTML—are not supported.

To bypass the preview page and allow your browser to directly render your files, use "raw=1" as a query parameter in your URL, which should be available to anyone with no restrictions. Changing "dl=1" or "dl=0" to "raw=1" in a URL will cause an HTTP redirect. If you're an app developer using such a URL in your code, make sure your app can follow redirects.

Note: Shared links don’t render HTML content in a web browser. If you created a website that directly displays HTML content from your Dropbox account, it won’t render in the browser, and may redirect to "*.dropbox.com/s/raw". The HTML content itself remains in your Dropbox account and can be shared.