What to do if Dropbox keeps downloading “Unspecified” files

Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services in the world. However, even a powerful service like Dropbox has its limitations that some people even consider as flaws.

A lot of users have been complaining on Dropbox forums about an error that causes them to download ‘Unspecified’ files instead of real downloads. Reportedly, this issue occurs when you try to download a file or folder from the browser version of Dropbox, and goes without any error message or warning.

Users find this quite annoying as most of them don’t actually know what’s going on. In this article, we’re going to explain the phenomenon of “Unspecified” Dropbox files and tell you what you can do to avoid downloading them in the future.

What “Unspecified” Dropbox files are and how to deal with them

As we said, downloading “Unspecified” files is not an error — It’s just the way Dropbox works. Namely, Dropbox doesn’t allow you to download files or folders larger than 1GB using the web client. The same goes for folders containing more than 10,000 files.

Although many users find this setting annoying, there’s nothing you can do to change it. But, there are other ways to download larger files from Dropbox: Downloading smaller pieces and using the Desktop application.

Download smaller files

If you need to download a larger file from Dropbox, break the download into smaller pieces. So, log in to your Dropbox account, find the folder you want to download files from and download a bulk of files smaller than 1GB.

While this method allows you to download files directly from the web browser, it can be a time-consuming and boring work in general. So, a more practical solution is to simply download the Desktop application.

Use the Desktop client

The “Unspecified files rule” doesn’t affect Dropbox’s Desktop client. As soon as you have the application installed on your computer, you can move as many files and folders from it to your local storage.

You can download the Dropbox Desktop client for Windows 10 from this link. It’s free of charge.

We doubt Dropbox will change this policy in the future. So, if you deal with files and folders larger than 1GB on a regular basis, we highly advise you to install the Desktop client on your Windows 10 computer. Not only you’ll be able to download as many files as you want, but you’ll have some additional benefits of using the Desktop application.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, let us know in the comments below.

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