Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox đŸ‘šâ€đŸ’»? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

ihatethecache's avatar
ihatethecache
Explorer | Level 4
8 years ago
Solved

How to stop the cache from reappearing? (Mac)

I'm at my wit's end with DropBox.    One of the machines I sync to is a bit older, with only 128 GB on the HD. I have selective sync enabled and have only around 8 GB synced. But the .dropbox.cache...
Delete
sync
  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    8 years ago
    There is no way to prevent the cache from being created or used. It's a required part of Dropbox's operation. As files sync, the cache is used to store the file chunks that are syncing. It also holds a temporary copy of files or folders that are deleted on other devices or the Dropbox website.
Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
8 years ago
There is no way to prevent the cache from being created or used. It's a required part of Dropbox's operation. As files sync, the cache is used to store the file chunks that are syncing. It also holds a temporary copy of files or folders that are deleted on other devices or the Dropbox website.
  • ihatethecache's avatar
    ihatethecache
    Explorer | Level 4
    8 years ago
    So you’re saying that the intended design is that if a user doesn’t have enough room for ~ 9GB of cache (and by the way there isn’t 9 GB of recently deleted files on any of my linked machines so I have no idea what is taking so much space) then the only other option is to not use DropBox? And there’s no workaround?
    • Rich's avatar
      Rich
      Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
      8 years ago
      I can't speak to the intended design. I just know that the cache is required for Dropbox to operate and if you delete it, Dropbox will just recreate it. Side note: if you do delete the cache, don't delete the folder; only the content within.

      If your files are up-to-date and you haven't deleted anything on other devices recently, then the cache shouldn't have much data in it. My 80GB+ Dropbox only has 108MB in the cache.
      • ihatethecache's avatar
        ihatethecache
        Explorer | Level 4
        8 years ago
        My issue seems to be that the cache is exceeding 9 GB despite the total files synced to the machine being less than that. And the cache should be dealing only with recently deleted items of which there are none.

        Meanwhile, I had been deleting only the files but then a DropBox support tech told me to delete the entire folder itself (show hidden folders / delete) so I hope they didn’t make the problem even worse ...

About Delete, edit, and organize

Solve issues with deleting, editing, and organizing files and folders in your Dropbox account with support from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!