Can we have a visual tool for understanding the files and structures in Dropbox?

Hey Andy C.19 - thanks for taking the time  to share your thoughts on this with us.

Are you familiar with the feature that allows you to manage your hard drive space by any chance? 

You should be able to access it from the desktop app's preferences after clicking on your account's picture.  

Let me know if that would do the trick for what you had in mind when you get the chance to have a look please.

Thanks!

hey walter,

thanks for writing. when you say manage your hard drive space are you referring to my dropbox space or that of my local harddrive?

thanks

I was referring to the "Manage hard drive space" option when you click on your account's avatar after clicking on the Dropbox icon in your system tray/menu bar Andy C.19 

This feature is for files you've stored in Dropbox, not on your computer's hard drive in general. 

gotcha, i'll check it out. Does it allow me to see folders and then files within? Are you familiar with Grand Perspective and how that operates?

Yes, it does Andy C.19 - you can also sort by files or folders when navigating the "Manage Hard Drive space" feature. 

As for the GrandPerspective, I haven't personally used it, but I just read how it works. The reason I brought up the 'Manage hard drive space' feature is because it identifies large or infrequently accessed Dropbox files stored on your local hard drive, and of course provides the option to change these files to "online-only" if needed. 

In regards to having the ability to identify large items in order to remove them from your Dropbox account, perhaps, currently, it might be more efficient to calculate the size of the files online.

 Having said that, I'll be more than happy to log your comments internally and please let us know if you have anything else to add or ask. 

I have posted what I think might be a very similar request (do you agree?) but just found yours.  It seems like GrandPerspective may be quite similar to the classic Windows utility app SpaceMonger which I mention in my post.  I wonder if there might be some way to merge these ideas.  I am envisioning it as something that doesn't really care about hard drives and what may or may not be synced on a user's machine, but instead allows graphical analysis of the treemap of the entire account, and thus how much of your allotted cloud storage is being used and by what.  Does that sound like what you're after?

Despite the availability of a link-generation tool in this text editor, it doesn't want me to actually share a link, so I think you'll need to find my post by looking at my profile or searching.  I'm not sure.  It is entitled "Visualize Dropbox Space: A Treemap View for Smarter Storage Management."