Hidden Dropbox logs folder is stuck, continually growing bigger, now beyond 300GB

An update from me... 

Still no solution, uninstalled, cleaned registry, rebooted, reinstalled and issue remains.

So, although Dropbox does not support logs being stored elsewhere (why not?), I used a Symbolic Link from:
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Dropbox\Logs
to:
E:\DropBox-Symlinked-Logs\

That at least stops me running out of space, my C: drive is a SAMSUNG PRO PCIe 4.0 M.2
My E: drive is a good old SSD with 4TB

And 24hrs later, 427GB of space used with 433,235 log files.
To me, the bug is Dropbox not clearing up. I'm now fully synchronised and Dropbox no longer using 20% of both CPU and memory which it's done all this time.

Why so many logs, I wouldn't mind but I've only got 363GB of files on the hard drive, 670GB in total (so half online only).

For now, I'll keep the Symlink in place, try a reboot and if that doesn't clean the logs, manually delete in the hope it doesn't do it all over again!

Screen shot of system/Log folder

My DB use

Hi jusy, thanks for the details. It might be worth getting in contact with the support team to see what could be causing this.

I am experiencing the same problems since last Monday (11/10/25), using Dropbox version 236.4.5918 on a Windows 11 laptop. It indicates that it is downloading over 720,000 files, but I did not initiate such a big download at all. 

Same as the other users reported, the Users/UserName/AppData/Local/Dropbox/logs folder gets filled up steadily until all free space (about 60GB) has been used up. During daytime (when other processes are active), the currently used log folder gets cleared after about 1 hour / 10,000 files in it (I can't indicate what exactly triggers this), but this does not seem to happen over night (similar to what exouk reported) and the log folder eventually fills up the entire hard drive, leaving 0 bytes of free space, and basically requires a shutdown and reboot of my computer in the morning.

The Dropbox processes use large amounts of my computer's memory and CPU, but there does not seem to be any actual download activity as the log folder continues to grow in size even when I turn off my internet connection.

In addition, Dropbox does no longer sync any new files that are added to local folders that are typically synced to the dropbox cloud.

Same as with the other users, I haven't seen this before in the past 3+ years since I have been using Dropbox.

I didn't uninstall Dropbox so far as that apparently didn't help the other users and just wanted to keep this running through the end (at a rate of 10,000 new log files per hour, that would have been about 72 hours), but that time frame also has long been passed by now.

Any other suggestions what to try? 

tsomek, thank you for posting this - I too have the very same problem, had/used Dropbox for years.

Nothing has changed on my system and this seems to be a new problem, so last week I totally uninstalled DB, re-installed and re-indexed, the problem has returned.

Logs are 146GB and increasing until I hit zero space on my 1TB drive, what I don't understand is most the time Dropbox tells me it's all indexed and done, it's like it's not cleaning up logs or doing tons of reindexing in the early hours as this doesn't happen when I'm at my PC, but my PC is never turned off.

It's got so bad, I'm seriously thinking of ditching DB, this is only a problem in recent weeks... I would not mind if I'd added tons of new files. I'm confident it's a DB bug.

HI tsomek, thanks for the info. In order to look into this matter in more detail, I'd recommend contacting the support team directly for them to investigate further.

plus, of course, the bloating is back..

Hi again,

I thought I had managed this, but it's back... 

I've been waiting for the new backup to happen, but it's VERY flaky and after days and days on and off, still hadn't concluded fully uploading the backup.

So I decided to cancel this all, switched off the backup option, and deleted all backups, and purging deleted backups..

And now.. it persists! Even though there is NO backup on the dropbox site, nor is there set to backup, it is downloading AND uploading this same backup at the same time! see screenshot.

I have closed the app, restarted, even disconnected the drive completely, then even went so far as to clearing DB cache (%HOMEPATH%\Dropbox\.dropbox.cache) and renamed (%APPDATA%\Dropbox), to force it so start from scratch.. NOTHING WORKS

PLEASE HELP - I AM UTTERLY SICK OF THIS

Dear Walter, thank you for your response.

After more than a week of battling with this, I managed to at least sort out the constant "bloating" of the log folder.

I persisted and was able to delete all Backups, and permanently deleting any already deleted ones.

At the moment, the log folder size is reasonable, as no hard disk is being backed up.

Saying that, I just told dropbox to backup my new SSD again, so I'm just holding my breath, hoping the issue doesn't start anew..

Any tips?

Will report back as things progress..

Many thanks!

Hey tsomek - thanks for the additional information and the screenshot too.

Can you clear your browser's cache and/or try another browser and let us know if you still get the same results?

Also, what is the Dropbox desktop app's exact status at the moment? 

Now I have also just seen that on the dropbox backup website there are two "deleted backups" there, one called 1TB portable (1), the other 4TB.
to clear things up once and for all, I've tried permanently deleting even these.. but it seems to get stuck at the point of the attached screenshot for both..
could the issue be related?