dbxcli: A command line tool for Dropbox users and team admins [UNOFFICIAL]

⚠️ WARNING: This project is NOT official. What does this mean?

• There is no formal Dropbox support for this project
• Bugs may or may not get fixed
• Not all SDK features may be implemented and implemented features may be buggy or incorrect

Features

• Supports basic file operations like ls, cp, mkdir, mv, rm (via the Files API)
• Supports search with sorting and flexible time formatting
• Supports file revisions and file restore
• Chunked uploads for large files, paginated listing for large directories
• Retry with exponential backoff for uploads and downloads
• Supports a growing set of Team operations

Installation

Download pre-compiled binaries for Mac, Windows and Linux from the releases page.

Mac OSX Installation of pre-compiled binaries

These instructions aim to help both experts and novice dbxcli users. Please submit an issue if they don't work for you.

1. Make sure you download and place the binary in a folder that's on your $PATH. If you are unsure what this means, go to step 2. Otherwise, skip to step 3
2. Create a bin directory under your home directory.

$ mkdir ~/bin
$ cd ~/bin

3. Add the following line at the end of your ~/.bash_profile file. Link with instructions on how to find this file

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

4. Download the dbxcli binary for OSX and rename it. IMPORTANT: Check that the tag v3.2.1 on the URL below is the latest release tag on the Releases page.

$ wget https://github.com/dropbox/dbxcli/releases/download/v3.2.1/dbxcli-darwin-amd64 
$ mv dbxcli-darwin-amd64 dbxcli

5. Finally, make the binary an executable file and you are good to go!

$ chmod +x dbxcli

Instructions for building yourself

For newcomers the go build process can be a bit arcane, these steps can be followed to build dbxcli yourself.

1. Make sure git, go, and gox are installed.
2. Create a Go folder. For example, mkdir $HOME/go or mkdir $HOME/.go. Navigate to it.
3. go get github.com/dropbox/dbxcli. That's right, you don't manually clone it, this does it for you.
4. cd ~/go/src/github.com/dropbox/dbxcli (adapt accordingly based on step 2).

Now we need to pause for a second to get development keys.

5. Head to https://www.dropbox.com/developers/apps (sign in if necessary) and choose "Create app". Use the Dropbox API and give it Full Dropbox access. Name and create the app.
6. You'll be presented with a dashboard with an "App key" and an "App secret".
7. Replace the value for personalAppKey in root.go with the key from the webpage.
8. Replace the value for personalAppSecret with the secret from the webpage.

Finally we're ready to build. Run go build, and you'll see a dbxcli binary has been created in the current directory. Congrats, we're done!

Usage

dbxcli is largely self documenting. Run dbxcli -h for a list of supported commands:

$ dbxcli --help
Use dbxcli to quickly interact with your Dropbox, upload/download files,
manage your team and more. It is easy, scriptable and works on all platforms!

Usage:
  dbxcli [command]

Available Commands:
  account     Display account information
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  cp          Copy a file or folder to a different location
  du          Display usage information
  get         Download a file
  logout      Log out of the current session
  ls          List files and folders
  mkdir       Create a new directory
  mv          Move files
  put         Upload a single file
  restore     Restore files
  revs        List file revisions
  rm          Remove files
  search      Search
  share       Sharing commands
  team        Team management commands
  version     Print version information

Flags:
      --as-member string   Member ID to perform action as
  -v, --verbose            Enable verbose logging

Use "dbxcli [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Listing files

$ dbxcli ls -l /Photos
Revision              Size    Last modified Path
abc123                1.2 MiB 3 weeks ago   /Photos/vacation.jpg
def456                4.5 MiB 1 month ago   /Photos/family.png

Time format

By default, ls -l and search -l show relative timestamps ("3 weeks ago"). Use --time-format for absolute dates:

$ dbxcli ls -l --time-format=short /Photos
Revision              Size    Last modified    Path
abc123                1.2 MiB 2026-05-15 10:30 /Photos/vacation.jpg

$ dbxcli ls -l --time-format=rfc3339 /Photos
Revision              Size    Last modified        Path
abc123                1.2 MiB 2026-05-15T10:30:00Z /Photos/vacation.jpg

Use --time=client to display client-modified time instead of server-modified (default):

$ dbxcli ls -l --time=client --time-format=short /Photos

Sorting

Sort results with --sort and optionally --reverse:

$ dbxcli ls -l --sort=size /Documents          # smallest first
$ dbxcli ls -l --sort=size --reverse /Documents # largest first
$ dbxcli ls -l --sort=name /Documents           # alphabetical
$ dbxcli ls -l --sort=time /Documents           # oldest first
$ dbxcli ls -l --sort=type /Documents           # folders, files, deleted

Searching

$ dbxcli search -l --time-format=short --sort=size "report"

All --sort, --reverse, --time, and --time-format flags work with both ls and search.

Team management

$ dbxcli team --help
Team management commands

Usage:
  dbxcli team [command]

Available Commands:
  add-member    Add a new member to a team
  info          Get team information
  list-groups   List groups
  list-members  List team members
  remove-member Remove member from a team

Global Flags:
      --as-member string   Member ID to perform action as
  -v, --verbose            Enable verbose logging

Use "dbxcli team [command] --help" for more information about a command.

The --verbose option will turn on verbose logging and is useful for debugging.

Contributing

• Step 1: If you're submitting a non-trivial change, please fill out the Dropbox Contributor License Agreement first.
• Step 2: send a pull request
• Step 3: Profit!

Useful Resources

• Go SDK documentation
• API documentation