Dragshare for Dropbox review: Menu-bar item makes sharing links less painful

One of the best things about Dropbox is how super easy the service makes it to share files with others—even if they don’t use Dropbox. Rick Waalders’ $2 Dragshare for Dropbox (Mac App Store link) makes the process even easier. Depending on how you work and how often you share files, Dragshare may be worth the small price tag.

Install Dragshare and it adds a systemwide menu-bar icon that looks like a drop of water. Link the software with your Dropbox account, and you then can share files by simply dragging them—either a single file or group of files—to that icon. When you do, Dragshare copies the data to its folder inside your Dropbox folder (Dropbox/Apps/Dragshare)—if you dragged multiple files, Dragshare first creates a zip archive—and then presents you with a popover sheet with three options.

From the sheet, you can choose to open the item on the Dropbox website in your browser, email a short Dropbox sharing link (with the subject “Share file: [file name]”) using your default mail client, or share the link on Facebook or Twitter. (You can opt, in the app’s preferences, to not see these sharing options each time.) You can bring up this same sharing sheet at any time by simply choosing an item from Dragshare’s menu—the apps lists recently shared files.

Unfortunately, you can’t currently drag a folder of files to Dragshare—in fact, attempting to do so severs the Dropbox connection and presents you with an error message. The developer says folder sharing will be fixed in the next update.

What makes Dragshare worth $2 when you could just manually add an item to your Dropbox folder and grab the item’s sharing link from Dropbox’s own systemwide menu? For starters, Dragshare’s automated email message, pre-populated with the link and an appropriate subject, is a timesaver; and built-in social media posting is a nice plus. But Dropbox’s menu shows only the most-recent three items you’ve added to or changed in your Dropbox folder, whereas Dragshare displays twice as many (the six most recent), and shows only those files you’ve specifically chosen to share. Finally, the fact that Dragshare puts everything into its own folder in Dropbox makes it easy to find shared stuff later—for example, if you want to delete files you no longer need to share or when your Dropbox space is low.

On the negative side, the fact that Dragshare duplicates shared files, instead of just moving them, means those files use more drive space, and file archives the app creates have gibberish names (such as “archive_4qt6Sj.zip”). But for those who regularly share files via Dropbox, Dragshare is a handy addition to your menu bar.

Still not sure if you’d use it? You can download a free trial version from the Dragshare website.

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