Am I safe to delete content off Dropbox, or will they get deleted from my phone too?

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chicagojami wrote:

Once I've uploaded all the pics from my iphone to dropbox, can I delete them off my phone or will they also delete off dropbox?

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If you delete them from your camera roll, they'll only be deleted from your phone. If you delete them in the Dropbox app, you're deleting them from Dropbox.

Most storage services work this way. If you delete a file in the dedicated app, you're deleting it from the service; not your phone.

I just sat through a long backup of 86,100 pics from my iphone to dropbox. Once it got to 86,100, I saw the upload number start to go down. Once it got down to 86, 080. I closed out of the app because I didn't want to lose more pictures. Then when I looked at the pics it had saved, it didn't save any pics from July-Aug and only a few from Sept. It's so weird. It's missing pics from my daughter's bday and our vacation. Any idea why the download # went up and then started falling? Any idea why it's not saving all my pics? I need to move to my new iphone 14 today but I don't feel comfortable doing that until all my pics are backed up in 2 places.

that's what I thought but bc of icloud i have tech trust issues ha. thanks!

Hi chicagojami, I hope you're doing well! 

Did you use camera uploads to sync your files, or did you choose to manually upload them? 

If you went with the first option you need to keep in mind that initially the number of pictures will go up, as the app calculates how many they are to be uploaded. That'll indicate the total amount. 

And then, as content gradually uploads to the account, you'll see the number of files decreasing. When you say you closed out of the app, do you mean you had it uploading files in the background, or closed it entirely? 

If you open the app now, does it still upload files, or is it up to date? 

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there!

HI @megan, I'm not really sure how I started the backup. I opened the app on my phone and automatically it started backing up. It's been running for over an hour and I'm still missing tons of pics.  I have 85, 640 pics on my phone. The dropbox app on my phone got to 85,020 during the backup but after an hour it's down to 84,380. Shouldn't it have the same amount of pics on dropbox as it does my phone? How will I know when the backup is complete? It still says "Backing up" with a blue line under it and the # is still dropping.

It's like 5 hours later and It's still uploading. It seems to start completely over if I use my phone to do other things and then open the dropbox app back up.I have it set to upload in the background but it never seems to stop and yet I'm still missing tons of pics that are in iphone but not yet in dropbox. Am I doing this wrong?

Hi chicagojami, the backup will be over once you no longer see the "Backuping up" message on your screen. 

In regards to background uploading, you can have a look at another colleague's detailed explanation in this thread. But overall when the app has to sync many files, it helps to keep it open, in order for it to keep syncing in the background. 

If I were you, I'd let the app sync all of the content, and if there's any files that might be missing from the bunch (which they shouldn't) but if it happens, you can manually upload them then. However it's best to wait until everything is updated. 

You are safe to delete them from your iPhone photos app once they have been backed up to Dropbox Photos.

However, do not delete them from your Dropbox Photos unless you have moved them to a non-Dropbox folder on your computer (I've only tested on a Windows 10 PC).

If you move them to a Dropbox folder different from the Camera Uploads folder and then delete the image in Photos on Dropbox, it deletes the photo regardless of what Dropbox folder it is in.  The reverse is not true. If you delete them using your computer from Dropbox/Camera Uploads or move them to another folder on your computer (Dropbox or not) they do not get removed from your iPhone's Dropbox Photos.

Bottom line: if you want to clear images from your Dropbox Photos on your iPhone, move them to a non-Dropbox folder on your computer first.

I'm not sure what happens on an Android phone, but I suspect the behavior is the same.

I hope this helps.

With that many photos, I'd opt for a different app.  I use the WiFi Photes app on the iPhone (not sure if it is available on Android). There are probably other similar apps.

You can then download photos and videos from your iPhone's Photos via .zip files.  I can't remember what the limitations are. It seems to me it's 100 or 200 photos per downloaded .zip file. It is still tedious, but at least your in control what gets downloaded and it works way faster than the Dropbox Photos backup.

I hope this helps.