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Peter T.5's avatar
Peter T.5
New member | Level 1
10 years ago
Solved

If I delete photos from my camera folder on my phone will they stay in Dropfox Camera Uploads folder?

Hi,

I want to delete photos from my phone to get storage space back. If these have already been synced and in the camera uploads folder in my dropbox they would not get deleted by deleting them on my phone, correct?

  • If you delete photos from your phone's camera roll, gallery, etc., they will not be deleted from from your Dropbox account. If you delete them from the Dropbox app on your phone, they WILL be deleted from Dropbox, but will stay in your phone's camera roll.

22 Replies

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  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    9 years ago
    If you delete them from the camera roll/gallery on your device, they will not be deleted from Dropbox. If you delete them from the Dropbox app on your phone, they WILL be deleted from your Dropbox account.
  • DagT's avatar
    DagT
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago

    Thank you for the information about the phone...I am in the same boat.  I have another related question.  If I have photos uploaded to DropBox and I delete them on my synced computer, will they be lost on DropBox?  I am still unsure about the "direction" that syncing goes.

  • Mark's avatar
    Mark
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    8 years ago
    Yes they will.

    Dropbox syncs from computers in both directions. Think of it as a mirror - so what happens on one machine/device replicates to all others.
  • Ian1's avatar
    Ian1
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago
    I am confused by the two replies from the two 'Super Users', they directly conflict with one another! Are photos deleted, or not?
  • catwoman45's avatar
    catwoman45
    Explorer | Level 4
    8 years ago

    I am confused too!.. I have deleted lots of picture on my cameraroll on my iphone... But hopefully I will keep all the pictures in dropbox????

  • Mark's avatar
    Mark
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    8 years ago
    I think a few posts have gone missing in between ours....

    If you upload from a DROPBOX OFFICIAL application on a mobile to the cloud then delete from your phone they wont delete from cloud. If you use third party ones (including some which almost look identical to Dropbox ones - Samsung Connect for example) then you can find things are deleted.

    If you upload via a computer using camera uploads (say) then it work as I said which is a mirror.
  • Dimitri V.'s avatar
    Dimitri V.
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago
    No they will not....
    It doesn't work that way on a phone...

    I can safely delete all pictures from my camera roll on my iphone and they still will al be there on my dropbox...

    PC works differently than on a phone
  • cfsampson's avatar
    cfsampson
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago

    Once the photos are uploaded to the Camera Uploads folder in Dropbox, move them to another folder (for example, mine is called Family Photos). If you have limited space on your device(s), don't sync the Family Photos folder with your PC or phone. They stay safe in Dropbox without taking up space on your device. I only move the photos periodically, whenever they start to pile up on my phone.

  • chillaxter13's avatar
    chillaxter13
    New member | Level 2
    5 years ago
    I use Dropbox to store photos from my phone and I'm running low on phone storage space. Is there a simple and safe way to delete files from my phone once they are stored on Dropbox? Or am I stuck going file to file on my phone?
    Samsung Note 10 using actual Dropbox app
  • Daphne's avatar
    Daphne
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    5 years ago

    Hi there chillaxter13, thanks for posting here!

     

    Once you've uploaded the photos or files from your phone to the Dropbox app, you can go ahead and delete them from the local storage on your mobile too free up space.

     

    Deleting photos from your Gallery won't affect the copy of the file that you uploaded to Dropbox and vice versa. 

     

    Hope that clears the matter up, let me know if you have any questions!

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