Dropbox for Android now lets paying users save files for offline viewing

Cloud file syncing and sharing company Dropbox today is announcing the launch of mobile offline folders for paying customers. Those with Dropbox Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans should see the feature show up on Android devices in the next few days. It will come to iOS early in 2017, the company says.

Dropbox competitors Box, Google Drive, and OneDrive let you mark individual files to be accessible offline through their mobile apps. But Dropbox went further than that in its implementation of the technology.

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“With mobile offline folders, you can tag an entire folder to have its contents automatically synced to your phone or tablet — no need to mark individual files for download,” Dropbox wrote in a blog post. “Just open Dropbox while you’re connected to the internet, and the app will take care of the rest.”

Box also lets users save files for offline access on mobile. It’s been available on iOS since 2010 and on Android since 2012, a spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. Egnyte, which offers syncing and sharing on cloud infrastructure or on-premises data center infrastructure, also lets users make folders available offline on mobile.

Dropbox had more than 500 million registered users, as of March. It’s not clear how many of them are paying users. Subscriptions start at $10 a month or $99 per year for the Pro service tier, which comes with 1TB of storage.

Update at 1:03 p.m. Pacific: Added information on Box.

Update at 2:20 p.m. Pacific: Added information on Egnyte.