Dropbox to shut down Mailbox and Carousel apps

Carousel wasn’t quite as unique among photo apps, though alongside Mailbox it pushed the idea that killer apps could lead to greater use of paid cloud storage.

Dropbox is doing away with Mailbox, the email app it acquired in March 2013, and Carousel, the company’s attempt at a standalone photo management app. The company says that it’s making this decision now to focus more directly on the primary Dropbox app and the collaborative features it’s known for. Dropbox released multiple letters to users that explained the situation, with each of them stressing the need for a streamlined, convenient experience for users moving forward. The team will now focus on streamlining “the workflows that generate so much email in the first place”.

On February 26, Mailbox users won’t be able to log into the app anymore, and any “auto-swipe” patterns that users have put together over the years will be deleted and disabled as well.

It launched Carousel in 2014, although the online photo sharing space has become increasingly crowded with revamps of comparable services at Google and Yahoo not to mention Facebook and Instagram.

Google’s Inbox has almost the same features, while Apple’s built-in Mail app and Microsoft’s Outlook app have numerous same gestures. It seems Dropbox is now abandoning that path, and focusing on “collaboration” instead. Users won’t lose any actual emails-those are still stored with Gmail or iCloud-and all lists will remain as labels in Gmail or folders in iCloud under the [Mailbox] header. Carousel has posted its own FAQ to help users with the next steps.

Dropbox says that since it made those moves, customers have shown they prefer to use just one app rather than multiple services. “If you have conversations or shared albums you want to save from Carousel, we’ll provide a simple export tool early next year”, the company notes.