Revisions for Dropbox

Unfortunately, the app largely stopped working at the end of September 2021!

The app used the Dropbox API to connect to the Dropbox servers to retrieve information on the user's files and directories, and in particular to check for recent edits. Thus, the correct functioning of the app was tightly tied to this service, provided by Dropbox.

A change to the Dropbox API, which became effective September 30th 2021, had the effect that the Revisions app was no longer able to keep an authenticated connection open to the Dropbox servers for any extended period of time. The end result is that the app does not really function correctly anymore.

In principle, it would have been possible to update the Revisions app such that it could have survived this change. However, in practice, this turned out to be rather difficult, as the app had not been updated for many years, and there were thus a large number of unrelated modifications that would also have been needed, to satisfy other recent changes and requirements (to the macOS operating system, Mac App Store distribution, etc). The amount of effort required was thus quite large.

Fortunately, what used to be unique functionality in the Revisions app is now available via other mechanisms provided by Dropbox itself, so the raison d'être of the app is now, largely, gone. Further details are provided below.

1. In terms of watching files and folders, the Dropbox website now provides a number of options (which did not exist when Revisions for Dropbox was originally created):
   • You can navigate to any folder (in the web interface), and view the "Folder history" (available under the drop-down menu by clicking on the three dots icon).
   • For any shared folder, you can sign up for notifications (by clicking the "Follow" button in the web interface for the folder in question).
2. One of the most important features of the Revisions app was the ability to revert an entire directory to a given point in time. This is now available via the Dropbox web interface, by opening up the folder in question and selecting "Rewind this folder" (available under the drop-down menu by clicking on the three dots icon).