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Storage Usage Quota Enforced by Dropbox for Desktop
We would like a (business-focused?) option where we can set a maximum percentage of free disk storage that the Dropbox app is able to use on-disk —ideally to be set within the Dropbox Admin Console and apply to all accounts, though with exceptions available, similar to how the "Storage limit per member" & associated "Exceptions" settings work today— plus a "hard stop" limit, e.g. pause syncing if free storage is <10 percent of total disk space. The general idea here would be if a system has 1TB of storage and 200GB already used for system/apps/email/whatever, Dropbox should not be able to use more than 80 percent of the currently-remaining free space. So in this example, assuming no change to non-Dropbox storage usage, if Dropbox's locally-synced storage usage exceeds ~640GB of downloaded files an actionable alert gets presented to the end user… and if they exceed the disk usage quota syncing gets paused until they free up storage, ideally by setting Dropbox files to online-only. This usage limit would need to scale dynamically, so that when Dropbox is using 200 GB (leading to 400GB total disk usage) and other processes on the system claim another 250 GB of storage (650GB total usage), Dropbox is now only allowed to claim another 280GB of the remaining 350 GB storage from that point in time. If other processes keep claiming free disk space the Dropbox app's limit should dynamically adjust until the hard-stop limit. This would help prevent situations we see now where somebody sets an entire project folder to offline mode (accidentally or without realizing just how much storage the folder will use) the Dropbox app will happily download files until the disk is completely full …which then causes all kinds of unfortunate knock-on effects and can be tough to reverse. With the addition of the Sync & Storage dashboard to make it easier for folks to see what is using up their space and quickly free up storage via Smart Sync Online-only mode, leveraging that to get people to offload Dropbox files —especially via a progressive series of alerts when their Dropbox folder is approaching/at the disk usage quota— would help prevent these disk-full situations caused by Dropbox. Thanks!
Default should not be "Remove Local Files"
Most recent Windows desktop update allows users to have files only on the cloud (saving local disk space). Problem is by DEFAULT, the update REMOVES all files locally WITHOUT WARNING (i.e. must have internet access to get to them)! For me, this defeats the reason I use DropBox in the first place, and I could just use the Microsoft cloud instead. I'm really glad I discovered this "removal" before I ended up someplace with NO internet access and NO access to files I need! I had to spend an hour undoing the cloud-only folders I needed locally and wait for all my files to re-sync! The default setting SHOULD have kept all files local and allowed me to select which ones I could tolerate being "cloud only", instead of putting a tremendous surprise burden on all users.
Give us a progress bar for indexing.
Indexing... Indexing... Is it working, or is it dead? Who knows. Are there issues? Maybe. Maybe not. OneDrive tells you how many files are left to index. If I see the number drop from 250,000 to 249,999, I at least know it's working. I don't say this lightly, because I hate OneDrive, but please do it like OneDrive. If you want to improve on them, you can give us an estimate of when indexing will be complete. I hope you'll consider it. Thank you.
Option to convert 'Available' to 'Available Offline'
Dropbox makes the distinction between Available Offline (local copy might be deleted to save space) and Always Available Offline (local copy will never be deleted by Dropbox). The former has the white icon with green border and checkmark, the latter the green icon with white checkmark. I want to be able to change files and folders from Available Offline (AO), to Always Available offline (AAO). Currently, Dropbox does not offer that possibility directly. The only way to achieve this effect is to convert the AO files/folders to Online Only (OO) first, and then select Make available offline. This is a time-consuming process, as Dropbox removes the local copies when converting to OO, and then re-downloads all the content. Unnecessarily, I might add, since all the content had local copies to begin with. Since the conversion from AO to AAO should be nothing more than changing some kind of flag on the files and folders, it should be a simple matter to provide a command for that purpose. And the opposite conversion (from AAO to AO) should also be available. (Currently, for AAO content, the only option is OO as well.) This is relevant for user who use the option to automatically save space. They want control over which files are and aren't candidates for removal of their local copies. But this is also relevant for people who currently do not use that option. When they decide to turn that option on, they do not want to run the risk of seeing their local copies vanish into the cloud without any control over which files are thus OO'ed. So, two additional commands in the context menu for Dropbox folders and files: On AO files and folders, something like Always keep this item on this device. On AAO files and folders, something like This item may be made OO to save space. (On OO files and folders, the Make available offline command is already in place for the conversion to AAO.)
Move "Sync next" back to the right-click menu on the desktop app.
Sync Next is for when there are multiple files syncing but one or more of which are needed sooner by the user. The best place to select which ones should synch next are by right-clicking those files themselves. Moving the option into the right-click menu make it easy for the user to select exactly which files are important to sync next without scrolling through hundreds of disorganized filenames in the status menu.
Automatic Sync Preferences based on modified
Dropbox to allow a setting in the Preferences > Sync where a user can nominate a modified file date in the past (i.e 30, 60 or 90 days) where if the file modified date exceeds this. the files get automatically removed from the persons device allowing people to manage hard drive space more efficiently. Where the no files are left in the folder, the folder itself then gets removed from the device. To put it back on, the person would need to resync it and save it as a updated modified file.