The Secret is Out: Clever Easter Egg Found in Dropbox

Dropbox, the handy cloud storage service, has quickly become a stalwart companion for people looking to sync files across multiple computers or to share files with others. What users probably haven’t realized is that the minds behind the service have a pretty good sense of humor, and hid a fun easter egg in the service.

So far the trick only appears to work for OS X users, and seems to have been hidden in April, but only just now been discovered. It can be accessed by changing the name of a file (or folder) in your Dropbox folder to a series of pre-set phrases. Doing so causes a window to appear that scrolls through pictures and quotes from many of the Dropbox developers, followed by a special thanks and some words of wisdom. There’s also a shoutout to Google, Microsoft, and Apple, perhaps a reference to those companies new interest in cloud-based services pioneered by companies like Dropbox.

So here’s how to access the egg. In OS X, navigate to your Dropbox folder. Create a new folder, and call it whatever you want. Then, follow the steps below.

1. Change the name of the folder to “albert didn’t know” and wait for the green check mark to appear on the folder, indicating that it is synced.
2. Change the name of the folder to “neither did aston” and wait for it to sync.
3. Change the name of the folder to “but rajiv totally knew! oh shoot!” and wait for it to sync.

This should trigger the egg. If nothing happens, trying changing the folder name from the “Get Info” panel. Note that this egg will trigger with any file, but you have to hide or remove the file extension.

(Dropbox forums via Hacker News)

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Max Eddy