Smart Sync is not freeing up disk space

[gagohabid]

The smart sync isnt freeing up hard drive disk space. See the steps below. .

1) I download files that increase storage space

2) Automatic smart-sync detects these files and says "syncing X number of files left...."

3) After finishing , the hard drive space does not free up.  

In addition to the above, when I select the download folder, I see multiple "green check mark" icons , even though it says "up to date" at the bottom taskbar when I hover over dropbox icon.

And finally when I right click on the individual files that display the green check mark, they instantly go from showing a check mark to the online only gray cloud icon, but yet, the hard drive storage again does not clear up after doing this. Also, the fact that it instantly goes from the green check mark to the cloud is weird in it self because if the file is local only , shouldn't it have some lag/delay in taking time for it to upload to dropbox.com? since it does take a while to sync files in smart-sync after you download files 

Please help me with the above. 

[Megan]

Hey @gagohabid, wishing you a great Monday!

As a first step, can you check your desktop application's status, along with the version and let me know what you find?

It'd also help to look for both the logical and physical file size of the online-only content. You can do this by:

-Right click on a file/folder
- Select 'Get info' if you're using a Mac or "Properties" on Windows
- In the properties window you will see the original file size followed by the actual on-disk size.

For example: 428,510 bytes (but the content would take 0 KB on disk)

Let me know what you find!

[KHP]

I have this problem too; I had 300 gb of files that I marked for "only online", but the free space on my Mac has not changed 😕

When I check the filen, it says the it takes up 0 kb on disk… but when I look at the used/free amount of storage it has not changed.

[Megan]

Hi @KHP, sorry to hear about this! 

Have you tried the steps shown here? 

Feel free to give them a try, and let me know how it goes.

 

[Kevin B.36]

Why do you point the user back to this thread, that seems rather foolish.

Regardless, the free disk space on my Monterey system 'should' have increased by 200Gb. It increased by nothing. When I go to a file it says, for example, Size 1,700,000 (8k on disk).  So clearly it has been moved online BUT BUT BUT the system does not recognise this. This is what people are complaining about.

Can we please have a fix?

[V C]

Anyone find a solution to this issue? It's so frustrating having to browse forum after forum and find no solution. Some of these threads with the same question go back a few years.

[V C · Accepted solution]

To all who are by now banging their heads against the wall, here is the fix per DB:

https://help.dropbox.com/sync/make-files-online-only

Bizarrely, the Community post that actually contains this answer (a 124-page long thread) has been archived and is therefore inaccessible. That's why Megan's link redirects you right back here. You can only find the OG post via google cache. 

Here is the relevant text, in case it also vanishes:

The reason for this is that file size is calculated based on something called “logical size” rather than “physical size”.

To see which files are really taking up your storage space, adjust your Dropbox settings so that online-only files have both logical and physical size set to zero. To do so:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com.
2. Click your avatar (profile picture or initials) in the top-right corner.
3. Click Settings.
4. Toggle Online-only files on Mac on.
   • Note: This setting may take some time to update. If you don’t see the update reflected after a few minutes, close the Dropbox desktop app, then reopen it.

[BrightSpark2]

Thanks V C !! this worked for me... kind of 

The Smart Synced files are no longer taking up DOCUMENTS hard drive storage space but now taking up an equivalent amount of space marked as OTHERS - so did not free up any hard drive space in total 

Am hoping this might be an indexing thing that will improve over time

[philmiler]

And I have the exact same problem. It says 0kb on the info, but in reality the file is still in the hard drive, taking up space. To the point where my 1 terabyte hard drive only has 1 gigabyte of free space now!! 

[SLOMusicLessons]

VC you’re a LEGEND, thanks so much!!!