Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨‍💻? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

bomberml's avatar
bomberml
New member | Level 2
5 years ago

Re: Is it safe to delete dropbox cache old files?

Hi, my /.dropbox.cacche./old_files/ directory is 180GB on my laptop. Can I manually delete this entire directory safely, it mainly contains unix files? It has been 5 days since I uploaded anything new to my dropbox and my dropbox says everything is synced. Also some of the files within the  /.dropbox.cacche./old_files/ directory are 5 months old, why aren't they deleting automatically?  

 

Thanks for your help, 

Monica 

1 Reply

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    5 years ago
    Hey bomberml, and welcome to our Community! 

    I've moved you under this thread, since your question seems to echo the one others had. 

    Dropbox keeps a hidden collection, or cache, of your files as backup storage. Files in the cache folder are stored there often after they are moved or deleted after syncing.

    If you can't find your file using all other practical methods, you can try to recover the file from Dropbox cache as a last resort, hence why they remain there.

    You should be able to clear your cache, by deleting content without losing any data.

    Can you try this, and let me know how it goes? 

    Thanks! 
     

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!