With up to 2GB of free storage, Dropbox is a great way to send large files, such as music or videos, to friends.
However, just adding the link provided by the Copy Public Link (right click on file in Public Folder and then Dropbox>>Copy Public Link) function to an email to a friend only allows them to play, rather than download the music or film. However, a very simple hack provides a direct download link which I imagine would be the most sought after.
The hack is to add “?dl=1″ (without quotes) to the link you got from Copy Public Link.
As an example, if Copy Public Link gives you
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/122xyz/kidsvideo.avi
this link will only play the video. But by changing it to
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/122xyz/kidsvideo.avi?dl=1
the link will now initiate download immediately on clicking.
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02/05/2011 at 19:45
DropBox — I really need to use it more « Linux & Stuff
[...] is a great way to share stuff with whoever you want without giving away your DropBox password. See my earlier post on how to directly download music and movies from a Public DropBox folder. What’s that [...]