iPhone storage and dropbox

[Atwistofabba]

Hi! Hoping you can help. I have the Dropbox app on my phone and I am in the process of moving my videos from my camera roll to Dropbox. I am doing this purely to try and free up space on my phone. However my question is - does this actually free up space on my phone or does it just basically store them in a different place as my videos have disappeared from my camera roll and are now in dropbox so I’m thinking maybe I’m not actually freeing up any space? Please if someone could help answer my question that would be v helpful!

[Rich]

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@Atwistofabba wrote:
I have the Dropbox app on my phone and I am in the process of moving my videos from my camera roll to Dropbox. ... does this actually free up space on my phone ...

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Once you've uploaded your videos to Dropbox (and allowed them to finish uploading) you can safely delete them from your Camera Roll. Once deleted from your camera roll, they'll no longer take up space on your device.

Dropbox does cache files locally, however. If you notice the amount of space used by Dropbox has increased, you can clear its cache from Settings within the app.

[Atwistofabba]

Hi there, thank you for your reply. The thing I’m a bit confused about is that I’ve uploaded them to Dropbox and they seem to automatically delete from my camera roll without me manually going back to delete them. Is that correct? And another reason I ask the question is because when I was initially trying to upload them to the app I had cleared space on my phone but after uploading a few videos my phone said my phone was full again so seems to defeat the object of what I was trying to do.

[Rich]

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@Atwistofabba wrote:
I’ve uploaded them to Dropbox and they seem to automatically delete from my camera roll without me manually going back to delete them. Is that correct?

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Dropbox doesn't do that, so it would depend on how you're uploading them and with what app. Dropbox doesn't (and can't) delete the files from your Camera Roll. Even using the automatic Camera Uploads feature, it can't remove the originals from your Camera Roll.

[Atwistofabba]

That’s so weird as they are gone and I haven’t deleted them. I have been uploading by using the Dropbox app on my phone and uploading them to a folder I’ve set up in there. I can see them in that folder but when I go back to my camera roll they are gone.

[Walter]

Hey @Atwistofabba, sorry to jump in, but can you clarify the exact steps you're taking to upload your files to Dropbox via the mobile app?

Can you try uploading an example file to see if it will be deleted again?