Dropbox Just Dropped One Of Its Best Lesser-Known Features

Many of your apps have features you’re not even aware of. Dropbox, for one, had a neat password manager. We say had, though, because it’s now getting killed off.

Dropbox is sunsetting its standalone password manager, Dropbox Passwords, after five years of operation. According to the company, the decision is “part of our efforts to focus on enhancing other features in our core product.” No specific reason was given for the shutdown. There’s a non-zero chance that it’s because almost no one was using the feature, though. For current users of Dropbox Passwords, the company has outlined a multi-phase shutdown process, but it does leave a bit of a tight window for migration to an alternative service. The process will begin in a matter of weeks, as a matter of fact. When August 28th rolls around (so a little less than a month from now), the mobile app and browser extension will shift to a “view-only” mode, and the autofill feature, which automatically populates login fields on websites and apps, will be shut down.

From there, come September 11th, the dedicated Dropbox Passwords mobile app will cease to function entirely. Users will still be able to retrieve their stored information, but only through the web-based browser extension. Finally, Dropbox Passwords will be completely shut down on October 28th. All user data, including stored usernames, passwords, secure notes, and payment information, will be “permanently and securely deleted” from Dropbox’s servers.

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Dropbox Passwords was first introduced as a premium feature for paying Dropbox Pro subscribers before being made available as a free perk to all Dropbox users in 2021. Both Google and Apple have deeply integrated password managers, so Dropbox, providing cloud storage services, wanted to provide some additional value of its own too. However, it also tried to break into an extremely crowded market, which is hard to do unless there’s a compelling reason for users to check out your service over others’. Thus, it failed.

In its communication to users, Dropbox itself has officially recommended migrating to 1Password as a replacement to its own password manager. Personally, I like Bitwarden a lot, but 1Password is a pretty solid option too. The native password managers built into Google Chrome (Google Password Manager) and Apple’s operating systems (iCloud Keychain) also remain viable alternatives if you don’t want to download something else.

The good part is that all of your sensitive data, if you don’t act on this, will be permanently deleted, so you don’t have to worry about it ending up in data breaches later on—Dropbox suffers from those sometimes.

Source: Dropbox via Engadget