How to Monitor Download Count in Dropbox

Dropbox has made it easy for us to share files publicly. We can put a file out there to be publicly downloaded via a public link. Users can download or save files into their own Dropbox account. However, as the owner of that file, we don't get to see how many times our shared file has been downloaded by the masses. Dropbox is not intended for storing downloadable files. It may terminate the public link once the bandwidth threshold is surpassed. Still, if you want to monitor your shared files download count, here are two viable workarounds you can use.

Method 1: Using Short URL

Short URL services like Bitly and Goo.gl will track how many times the links are clicked, showing you the count of how many times your file has been clicked on. Bitly remains my favorite URL shortening service to date. Bitly's statistics report of a link's performance is more comprehensive compared to other similar services that I've tried. Bitly lets us see the click count in a specific range of time: hourly, 7 days, and 30 days. Bitly also shows us geographical reports, recording the places where our links are clicked.

method 2: Using Dropbox Plugin

Although Dropbox doesn't have a downloaded link count, it does have the Dropbox API which allows developers to build plugins to help you do that. One outcome of that is OrangeDox. To get started with Orange Dox, connect OrangeDox to your Dropbox account. Once you've allowed OrangeDox to have access to your Dropbo [...]