Important changes to the Dropbox Public folder

Dropbox Basic (free) users

As of March 15, 2017, the Public folder in your Dropbox account has been converted into a standard folder. By default this folder is private to your account and it acts just like any other folder that you’ve created. This transition will occur automatically.

Here's what you need to know:

• All files in your Public folder will remain safe, but public links to those files will stop working.
• If someone visits a link to a file in your Public folder, they'll see an error page.
• To see a list of your public links, visit the Public folder. Any file in this folder will have had a public link associated with it.
• Dropbox can't convert existing public links into Dropbox shared links.
• If you'd like to re-share any of the files in your Public folder, please use a shared folder or shared link.

Using the public folder to render HTML content

As of October 3, 2016, Dropbox Basic (free) users can no longer use public links to render HTML content in a web browser. 

If you're a Basic user and you created a website that displays HTML content from your Dropbox account, it won’t work in the browser anymore. The HTML content itself remains safe in Dropbox, and you can share it using any of our other sharing methods.

Effective September 1, 2017, Dropbox Plus and team account users can no longer render HTML content. The Public folder and its sharing functionality have been disabled.

Accounts created after October 4, 2012

Dropbox accounts created after October 4, 2012, wouldn’t have had a Public folder. If you'd like to quickly share files you can use a shared link. Shared links work even if the person you're sharing with doesn't have a Dropbox account.