Smart Sync storage issue on macOS Sierra 10.12- macOS High Sierra 10.13.3.

The attached photo shows:

• My computer is running 10.12.3
• The folder RHLO admin is set to Online Only
• My computer thinks it is taking up 96.8 MB

Thanks for trying.

Ross, as you mentioned a message was sent this morning for the explicit attention of Luke and the usual patronising and disconnected auto response has been sent back by a colleague called Melina. No attempt was made to understand what I had wrote or to clearly see that this needed to be passed on. This is why I don't contact support.  See response below to ticket 5676210 for Dropbox Business support.

She went back to the very beginning to explain the difference between smart sync and selective sync :(

Thanks Fowzie, now I have that ticket I'll take the case over and we'll see what you and I can do here to get this resolved.

I'll reach out to you on that ticket.

I'm also on 10.12.3 and still have the same issue. While I agree that there are 0 bytes actually on my harddrive, if the system thinks that the file is taking up space, the result is the same -- lack of space.

Ok, then I'll send you an email SteveA, lets get this fixed for you, we want to make sure you enjoy using the feature!

If it's useful to hear another example - I just was added to a new folder on my team that was set to cloud only - it still has the cloud only symbol but immediately finder was reporting that it took up around 30GB of space - too quick for 30GB to have been downloaded. This is also not a hard link vs symlink problem that is cosmetic. I just hard linked via terminal a 20GB file and the hard link says in finder that the "size" is 20GB. However, in the volume information, the free space did not decrease by 20GB since the hard link is simply a kind of "pointer" to the same sectors on disk. Dropbox is essentially doing whatever the hard drive version of "malloc" is, and then not actually putting any bytes there.

Ross -- I'm having some issues with smart sync as well as a business user.  I have been trying for the better part of two months to get assistance on the issue with DB phone support.  I have a ticket number.  I was once told to restart my computer to resolve the issue -- and secondly told to reinstall as an admin.  Both options have failed.  I'm at dead end.  Can you please provide me advanced assistance?

I have a business account and i am working with MacBookPro having OSX 10.10.5 working. I did upload my data and then i got the message not enough storage because my sytem SSD has 250GB and my drive has 1TB. The Drobbox shows 60GB for its folder.

So i cant work on with uploading. Each time i upload it will increase the local usage of storage on the SSD. I try to change it to my 1TB drive but it didnt work.

But the goal is to save storage on my local Mac and not double all storage???

Thanx for your help in time! I would love to continue working with my files on dropbox...

Peter

Hey Ross,

I have version 10.12 and the smart-synced folders have maxed out my hard drive. I can not work on any projects until this is fixed and have been waiting for a reply from your techs. Please help me! 

Hi,

Reading these posts from March of this year, I can say that I have macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and smart sync files set to online only show as taking space on my hard drive.

So this still is not working right. 

Anyone else experience this?

Dear Luke,

Thanks for your update. Can you help me with this:

I've got Mac Os 12.2 and when I see the info on my folders set to "online only" with Finder via Command+i , it shows the size of the files, and then the real physical size they're taking up in my drive, which is negligible (maybe only filesystem info about files, subfolders, etc.)

My problem is, my favorite disk organizer (Disk Inventory X), which shows the space taken by my files in a neat treemap format, uses the nominal file size rather than the physical size. This renders my disk organizer app useless since I cannot locate which files and folders are actually eating up my physical disk space.

Now comes the question: Do you guys know of any disk organizer app which uses the physical size, not the nominal size, so it becomes actually useful when organizing the physical disk in our drives when we're using Smart Sync?

Hope I worded the question properly. I'm sure the answer will be useful not only for me but for any others.

tl;dr You need to know that just because you upgraded to a Professional account and Smart Sync may seem like it's working, your local Dropbox app may need some tweaking to fully work.

I signed up for Professional and then went through my folders, right-clicked, Smart Select > Online Only. The icon next to the folders changed from a filled in green check-mark to an empty green check-mark so I thought everything was doing what it was supposed to. But then I didn't notice any change in the free space on my harddrive. 

Eventually I looked in Preferences on the Dropbox desktop app on my MacBook Pro (running MacOs High Sierra 10.13) and found that there was a little link saying "Enable Smart Sync". I clicked it and had to go to System Preferences to allow Dropbox to install some other little program. I then rebooted my computer (just to be safe).

Now, when I click on a file or folder and click Smart Select > Online Only the icon changes to a grey cloud. See a screenshot below. It seems that the the filled in green check mark means a Local synced file, the empty green check-mark indicates a synced folder that contains a combination of Local and Online Only files, and the grey cloud indicates a file or folder that is completely Online Only.

It didn't happen instantaneously but now, slowly, the free space on my harddrive is increasing.

Now that I followed the steps I outlined in my last post it's version 37.4.29. I don't know what version it was before I followed that step. Is there a way that I can look that up for you?

I'm pretty sure that the little program that was installed is called "Dropbox system extension". I see now that, in my settings, under General, there's a little toggle to turn that on or off and the information mouse-over says that it's necessary for Smart Sync to work (see screenshot below).

I ahve the same issue

I'm on 10.13 and having the same problem...what OS release is the fix tagged to?

Hi CMParrish,

Have you gone through the steps to allow and install the Dropbox sytem extension? You can find the instructions here: https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/filesystem-integration I don't know if it's tagged to a specific OS release. At the top of the instruction page it says, "The system extension for macOS is currently in closed beta for select opt-in users only." So I think you will need to follow the steps to install it and allow it. It won't just happen automatically by installing Dropbox. Good luck!

I've freed up about 40GB of space using Smart Sync.

Hi Sanchez,

I would recommend that when someone upgrades their plan to Professional (which is likely to be because of Smart Sync) that Dropbox should send them an email which includes some message saying, "You will need to make sure that the Dropbox System Extension is installed for Smart Sync to work. Here's how you can do that."

It could also be good to explain that people won't necessarily see immediate space being freed up as soon as you mark a file or folder "Online Only" - it may take a couple of hours to start to see the changes.