Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let me show you how to use Dropbox to quickly put files on your iPhone
or iPad.
So there are many methods to get files from your computer to your iPhone.
But not all of them are convenient.
For instance, the iCloud method only works with certain Apps.
You have to have Pages on your Mac, Pages on your iPhone and then you can use iCloud
to have a document that is shared between them.
Some third party Apps allow you to transfer documents through iTunes when you sync and
some third party applications will also sync by themselves over the internet, say like
Evernote.
But say you just want to get a quick document to your iPhone.
You want to do this really fast before you leave the house.
I find the best way to do this is to use Dropbox and I have been using this feature for a long
time.
Let me show you.
So here I am on my Mac and I've gone to my Dropbox folder.
I've got Dropbox installed on my Mac, its running, and I've signed up for an account.
Then on my iPhone I have also downloaded the Dropbox app and I've signed in with this app
using the same account.
So these two folders will stay in sync.
So here I have this pdf file.
Say it is a map to somewhere.
It's on my computer and I'm about to run out the door and I want to make sure I have this
map available on my iPhone.
So I'm going to drag and drop it into my Dropbox folder and it will sync with my Dropbox account.
So now it is available, in the Cloud, inside of Dropbox.
Now over here on the iOS side of things it will sync to the iOS device once it is completely
uploaded to the Cloud.
You can see it is still syncing there.
Now it is uploaded to the Cloud so now over here I should see it appear and I'm going
to just force it to appear really quickly here by just switching.
I'm going to go over to another screen, say Favorites, and then back to Dropbox and you
can see there it forces an update and I've got it available.
Now at this point it is available in the List there but it is not actually on my iPhone
so I have two choices.
One I can run out the door and then when I want to view it I can tap it there in the
app and it will download wirelessly to my Dropbox app.
Or I can actually do it right now really quickly while I'm still on WiFi at home and it will
load much faster, because I'm on WiFi, and I get the map right there.
Now the cool thing is, is that I leave, I'm on the road, and I want to refer to the map.
The map is loaded on the iPhone.
It won't throw it away.
So if I want to access it again you can see it is not gong to download it again.
It is going to appear there rather quickly.
So the two advantages of using Dropbox like this are: Number One.
It is very quick and easy to get things to your iPhone.
After you have this set up you can just basically drag things that you want to share onto your
iPhone into your Dropbox folder on your Mac.
Or save a copy of them there if you want to.
Then you won't have to worry about things on the iPhone side.
You just know that the next time you access Dropbox you will be able to get to those.
The second thing is that if you want to actually have them preloaded on your iPhone so that
you don't have to use your wireless band width or even rely on having any connection at all
you can download it right there by just viewing it and then it is kind of cached there on
your iPhone.
Now also notice in doing this it shows that Dropbox is in fact a pdf viewer.
Because I am viewing that pdf in the Dropbox.
So you may ask what other types of files can I view in Dropbox.
Actually there is quite a long list.
If you go to the Dropbox web site it will show you that yes pdf files are supported.
But also there is Keynote, Pages, Microsoft Powerpoint.
It does videos, it does different music files, different image files, even html files and
things like rtf documents.
So you have a lot of different types of files, perhaps all the different ones that you use,
that you can view then in Dropbox.
So you can drag and drop them in Dropbox and know they will be available for viewing on
your iPhone without any complex system of having to sync.
I hope you found this useful.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.