The browser immediately starts downloading the meta-installer. To convey that this transition has occurred, the browser greets the user by name: The browser then authenticates the users and logs them in, without requiring their username or password at all. When the server hears from the phone, it can tell the browser that the QR code’s unique token is now associated with a user. The browser, meanwhile, is polling the server for new information about the unique token. Once it successfully captures the QR code, it extracts the unique token and communicates it to the server, along with the user ID of the user currently signed in on the phone. It knows to ignore any QR codes not generated by Dropbox. The phone auto-focuses and captures the QR code. When the user taps ‘Next’ on their phone, a camera appears with instructions to point it at the computer. We place identical copies of the QR codes (embedded as inline images with data urls) in each of the empty boxes. Here’s what the background image looks like. To make the flow more fun, we display the QR codes inside a Dropbox. On our servers, we generate a QR code with a unique token and display it on the website.

Trying to go to the connect website from the phone’s browser is one possible failure mode. Our goal in this flow is to get the user set up with Dropbox on their desktop, minimizing any risk of losing them along the way. It instructs the user to go to /connect on their computer (we added a picture of a computer too, just to make things extra clear). The desktop connect flow begins on the phone.

Dropbox login page download