Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
alanS
4 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Mac seems to think HD is full of DropBox files?
I'm using a Mac and have about 100Gb of DropBox folders, many are local on my HD as well (I have DropBox Plus 2Tb plan).
I went through and changed all files to online only (grey icon) and now my D...
- 4 years ago
Hey alanS, sorry to jump in here, but I just wanted to mention that this space might be taken up by the cache folder that Dropbox creates on your computer.
If the desktop app has finished syncing and it's 'up to date' in your menu bar, you could try deleting it to free up some hard drive space.
Let me know if this helps, Alan.
Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
4 years agoHi alanS, it looks like Dropbox is correctly showing the size of the files on disk, being only 308.9 MB for the Dropbox folder, when the full folder would've been 9.48 GB. It seems the OS isn't displaying the correct sizeof the files in the system.
Could you check if the 'Online-only files on Mac' for Mac is enabled here?
Regarding the Documents folder, is it located in the Dropbox folder itself? The last image showing 'Documents' means literally any kind of document located on your machine, not just files in the Documents folder.
alanS
4 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Jay,
Yes, I do have 'Online-only files on Mac' turned to ON (see first message).
You're correct about the issue...my Mac is not displaying the correct storage amount. A few days ago it said I have over 100Gb of DropBox files and only about 15Gb of free space. Now, two days after I've moved all my DropBox files online it's still showing only about 15Gb of available storage.....not possible if I've moved all the DropBox files to online only....why don't I see over 100Gb's of free space on the hard drive?
Thanks,
Alan.
- Walter4 years ago
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey alanS, sorry to jump in here, but I just wanted to mention that this space might be taken up by the cache folder that Dropbox creates on your computer.
If the desktop app has finished syncing and it's 'up to date' in your menu bar, you could try deleting it to free up some hard drive space.
Let me know if this helps, Alan.
- alanS4 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Thanks for all the replies...in fact the confusion may have been on my end...I have a large Lightroom preview folder which is using a huge amount of space but I think the initial problem was not having the "Online only files on Mac" unchecked..giving me the impression that DropBox was using a lot more space than it was.
Thank you all!
Alan.
- rproco3 years agoExplorer | Level 4
I seem to be having the same issue but can't really understand if I've been able to delete the cache. I transferred a large file from an external hd straight to dropbox that is online-only and my system data jumped filling all the space on my hd. I now can't even transfer any file from an external hd to dropbox as it say I need to free up space to do the transfer. I've used the shortcut SHIFT COMMAND (.)period for deleting cache which brought up a greyed out dropbox file but it wasn't labeled cache in any way. I deleted it anyway but didn't solve my problem. Any help would be appreciated as this makes my 2tb dropbox storage pretty useless if I can't even transfer files from and external hd. I did find somewhat of a workaround using dropbox.com and transferring that way but takes forever.
- Hannah3 years ago
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey rproco, thanks for posting here!
Just wanted to clarify that when you add a file to your Dropbox on a computer, the file will need space to do the initial sync, so even if you've set new files to sync as online-only, you will first need space to sync the file.
After syncing is finished, you can go ahead and switch it to online-only, to free up the space.
I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions.
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