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Vincehood's avatar
Vincehood
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

Dropbox app fills up entirely the local iPhone storage

Hello,

I have a Dropbox Plus account which I share between my Mac, my Android Galaxy S21 and my wife iPhone SE. I am currently using only 22,1% of the 2 TB on my account.

On her iPhone, Dropbox is set-up to upload all her pictures to Dropbox but it keeps filling up the local storage. The iPhone runs IOS 16.2 with Dropbox 310.3. It has 64GB storage. 36 GB are used locally for pictures.  The goal is to sync all these pictures to Dropbox in order to reclaim the local space.

I tried several times and each time Dropbox ends-up filling up the iPhone local storage with 6.2 GB data! How is it possible?

 

I have read similar threads in this forum and applied the suggested corrective actions without success namely:

-clear Dropbox cache

-remove Dropbox app

-restart iPhone

-re-install Dropbox app

 

There is no backup, no offline files set-up on the iPhone.

Do you have any suggestion? Currently the presence of the Dropbox app on the iPhone makes the iPhone totally unusable since it runs out of space.

It is a quite serious issue!

Any suggestion?

Best Regards

/Vincent

 

19 Replies

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  • Andojovi's avatar
    Andojovi
    Helpful | Level 5
    2 years ago

    I too am having this same problem with the Dropbox app !! 

    I've tried everything, except physically removing the app - since what is the point in paying for Dropbox if I can't use the app to facilitate the downloads??? 

     

    So I finally realized that it's DROPBOX filling up my iphone storage space; so each time I save images or video clips to dropbox; and then delete it from my iphone - the space is occupied by dropbox app!!! So why am I paying to save my docs to dropbox, if I can't use it to save space on my phone? I might as well pay for more iphone storage in that case!!!

     

  • Alain_P's avatar
    Alain_P
    Helpful | Level 6
    11 months ago

    I have the exact same problem. I spent a lot of time looking this up and troubleshooting (deleting cache and such). It seem to boil down to the Camera Upload feature as PassedBy2 mentioned. The space occupied by Dropbox seem to roughly match the Camera Upload size. BUT... I just tried emptying the Camera Upload folder on my Desktop which immediately reflected on the Dropbox app home page, then I emptied the cache and restarted the iPhone. Unfortunately... no change at all. I still see 4.33GB being occupied by data from the iPhone local Storage perspective (Despite Dropbox app saying it's occupying no space locally). 🤯 Important note: Camera Upload is a great feature and my main way to move my pictures from iPhone to my PC (and back it up in Dropbox). This is one of the reason why I used Dropbox. I also have a LOT of files on my PC syncing with Dropbox and a LOT of files Online only. So uninstalling dropbox on my desktop to troubleshoot is not an option. I could uninstall the app from my iPhone if you think it may help but only if I'm sure it won't have any impact on my PC/Cloud. (By the way I have 2 PCs syncing with DB)
    Thanks in advance ! 

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    11 months ago

    Hey Alain_P - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

    Can you please let us know your device's OS version and the version of the Dropbox mobile app that's installed there as well?

    A screenshot of where you're spotting the storage space discrepancy would also help!

  • Alain_P's avatar
    Alain_P
    Helpful | Level 6
    11 months ago

    iPhone 15 pro IOS 17.6.1
    DB app 406.2.2  (Space used "zero ko" says the Parameters )
    iPhone Settings/General/iPhone Storage/Dropbox/Data and documents 4.33 Go

  • Jo5678's avatar
    Jo5678
    New member | Level 1
    11 months ago

    I have the same issue - Iphone 15 and my phone is now unusable as dropbox has filled the phone memory and not functioned as a cloud based back up. 

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    11 months ago

    Hi Jo5678, have you tried clearing the cache of the Dropbox mobile app?

  • Roga41's avatar
    Roga41
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    11 months ago

    Hi Jo5678, 

    May I know if you enabled the Camera Uploads so the photos/videos are automatically copied on the Dropbox cloud? If the answer is yes, by default, your photos will be uploaded to a folder in your Dropbox account named Camera Uploads. You can’t change this; however, you can move your photos to a different folder in your Dropbox account after they’ve been uploaded. Once they are transferred to another folder, you may now delete the files (photos/videos) stored in your phone's photo library because the backup feature for mobile does not automatically make your photos/videos as available online only. The purpose of this is that whatever happens to your phone such as being lost/stolen, or someone messed up your photos/videos like deleted them, this will not affect what's already copied on the cloud. So if you want to use Dropbox space to free up mobile space, you need to manually delete the files in your photo gallery to make room of new ones. And don't forget to transfer the copies on another folder so that only the new copies will show in the default "camera uploads " folder by then. Hope this helps.  https://help.dropbox.com/create-upload/camera-uploads-overview

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