I am growing increasingly frustrated with this so called "smart sync" feature Dropbox has recently introduced (or rather forced upon me). I have a number of files I've brought over to Dropbox using the finder on my Mac, that I have then marked as online only, in hopes that it would upload the files and then remove them from my local storage, which is limited. However Dropbox keeps randomly re-downloading the files to my system even after telling it that I want the files to be online only. This feature is supposed to "save hard disk space", which it does seem to do temporarily before it just starts downoading things again. It seems as though the only safe way to keep files from my drive is the old fashioned selective sync from preferences, but this is a backward way of working, especially when I want to have the folder show up on my local drive so I can bring files into it, but I may want those files to only live online. Has anyone found a solution to this abnormal behaviour (that, once again I might add, was forced on us as justification to increase the price of the paid service)?

I am having the exact same issue. Almost every day I turn on my laptop to discover files I have sent online are now local again. What is the solution?

Hi Walter, It could be the antivirus program. If so, I could change the settings so that the files I have in Dropbox aren't scanned -but I don't know the security implications.I don't have the time or patience to keep trying to find the reason for the Dropbox malfunction. I've had Dropbox for quite a while and haven't had this problem until I started using Dropbox on my limited hard drive 256GB laptop. It demonstrated that "smart sync" doesn't work in real world environments. Others on this blog have also had the problem. I use One Drive for another thing that I do, and don't have this problem. Dropbox has always been a bit clunky because it sometimes doesn't clearly tell you what it is doing, or to find the right place to click for a common action. It reminds me of when VHS recorders needed an expert professional to make it do what you wanted. I'd like you to refer this to someone who can fix Dropbox so that if you select "off line" it means that the file or files stay off line. I know it can be done. David

I am having the same issue. I want to be able to open files (online only files) visible in File Explorer, alter them, then save them and they just stay online. Rather than downloading locally every time. *Edit* - Thank you Jay (Dropbox Staff below comment). All you have to do is edit the file in File Explorer (this downloads it to your computer automatically). Once you are done editing, you can simply right click the file or folder in File Explorer and chose 'Make online-only'.

I find it unacceptable that an anti-virus is causing the issues with dropbox. My Google Drive, icloud and OneDrive does not have any issues working with my anti-virus.Secondly, I can not and will not turn off an anti-virus because dropbox can't solve this issue.

Agreed, paying for this service and it defeating the purpose of cloud storage is crazy. The fact Dropbox has shown no signs of resolving this issue over the history of this thread tells me things aren't going to improve. I'm going to switch to someone else.

"Smart" sync keeps downloading Online Only Files

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Fiona
Dropbox Staff
6 years ago
Hi adamschoales. Thanks for posting about this issue.

I'd be glad to fix this for you if there is a technical issue there. :tools:

Note :pushpin: Smart Sync downloads files locally, when you open them to preview or edit. If you have third party apps syncing/using your Dropbox files. Smart Sync would recall the files locally for the third party app to use them.

Having said that, are you accessing the files locally when Smart Sync reports downloading? Is there a third party system accessing these files?

What version of the application do you have installed on your desktop?

Are all your files downloading or is this something you see with specific folders?

Looking forward to the additional information to help you!

Thanks.
adamschoales
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago
No third party files are accessing these. These are all files that I recently moved/copied to Dropbox from other locations, and set to "online only". Never even opened once moved to dropbox. And yet they still kept re-syncing.
This is especially problematic for the files that are quite large in size. I have home movies that are several gigabytes that I simply want to store on Dropbox as an offsite backup, but when they keep downloading back to my machine not only are they taking up several gigabytes on my machine but wasting several gigabytes of bandwidth to constantly re-download.
The Dropbox app is vr. 86.4.146 and I'm runnning Mac OS 10.14.6.
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
6 years ago
Please add a screenshot showing the space the Dropbox files take up from your computer at the time.

As for your syncing, I located a ticket you have with our support and took over to take a look at device specific details. You already have my response there adamschoales.

Feel free to get back to this thread and post the explanation I provided you there.

Thank you!
adamschoales
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago
As mentioned in my email:
You flagged that you saw that the default Smart Sync setting you have for this device is "Local". Not sure where you’re seeing the default sync is “local” because here’s a screenshot from the app on my end where it clearly says online only. If you’re seeing something saying it’s set to Local that is perhaps part of the issue - somewhere in the system Dropbox thinks that’s what I want even though on my end I’m telling it otherwise.

Also, as mentioned, third party apps are not accessing the files. I don’t have any anti-virus software running, and while I do have some backup apps, they all have the Dropbox folder excluded from the backup.

So really not sure what’s going on here. Like I mentioned, the only way to get things to work properly seems to use the old “Selective sync” method, which completely defeats the purpose of Smart Sync to begin with.
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
6 years ago
Thank you for updating the thread with additional information.

I would like us to continue responding to the email, if this is OK with you, so I can have all your responses there, in case I need to escalate.

You are of course welcome to post back here, when we get this resolved for you.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.
busboys45
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago
I am having the exact same issue. Almost every day I turn on my laptop to discover files I have sent online are now local again. What is the solution?
onnovanvelzen
Explorer | Level 4
6 years ago
sam happening to me. very annoying as i keep running out of space.
any solutions?
Lusil
Dropbox Staff
6 years ago
Hey busboys45 and onnovanvelzen, thanks for nudging us on this thread.

In general, due to some processes on your computer that may look at files that you may not have manually opened, in order to fulfill those requests, Dropbox syncs the files. Examples of such include backup services, antivirus, recently used file lists or third-party applications that monitor files in general.

Although you can turn local files into online-only by simply right-clicking on them and selecting the Smart Sync option, if there are apps that constantly/persistently look at your files, they may come back as local, just as you described in your posts.

For this reason, try temporarily quitting or disabling apps systematically, until you see that the issue is resolved. The last app that you closed when the behavior in question no longer occurred may be the one performing this action.

Let me know how you get on with this and I'll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible. Cheers!
MBVIP
Explorer | Level 4
6 years ago
I am also having this same issue and it's very problematic. I have no anti-virus software, no third party apps, nothing. Please help
busboys45
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago
Hello Lusil,

This was exactly it, I finally was able to decipher the pattern. In my case it was "recently used file lists" in QuickTime/Word/Excel/PowerPoint. Each time I would use those apps/programs the files in the recent tab would "localize" and download from Dropbox, which was especially problematic when it came to QuickTime and larger video files. I cleared up all my recent files lists within those apps/programs and I am good to go!

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"Smart" sync keeps downloading Online Only Files

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