Dropbox camera uploads now available to free users

The past year and a half have changed the world in more ways than one. Almost all aspects of modern life have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially work and education. Even as restrictions slowly get lifted in some places, the lines that divide work and home continue to blur. Those work from home or remote work arrangements are mostly made possible by the Internet and the cloud, and Dropbox is now announcing some important new features and changes to its services that further empower such hybrid workflows.

Dropbox has long switched to a different tiered business model that left many free Basic users wishing they could afford the cloud service's paid subscriptions. Fortunately, Dropbox does make some features available to the Basic tier from time to time. One example is Dropbox's photo backups that can now be enjoyed by all users, regardless of tier.

With Dropbox's camera uploads, users can automatically backup photos from smartphones so that they will be accessible on any device connected to your Dropbox account. Rather than just uploading everything, however, users can also choose which albums to automatically backup and how they're saved to the cloud. This latter feature is now available on Dropbox for iOS but Android users are promised their turn will come soon.

Many Dropbox users employ the cloud storage for storing not just phones but also images for work. Those may come in formats that differ from the requirements of a certain task or document. Rather than having to download the image, convert it to another format, and then reupload it, Dropbox now offers a way to convert files right then and there.

Dropbox Passwords, which is also available to Basic users, is also getting some new features that can make your online life a bit easier. From filling in login forms to saving credit card information to securely sharing passwords, Dropbox Passwords is expanding to become a true-blooded password manager in its own right, one that doesn't require another account to sign up for and secure.