Child Item

How do I stop Dropbox from auto moving files to online-only?

Last night, I accidentally caused my disk free space to go below 5GB. Dropbox decided to silently move all files to cloud and deleted all local copies, keeping just "links" (names a cloud+downward arrow icon next to it), WITHOUT notifying me!!! This happened without my knowledge and cause a few other apps that depends on files in dropbox folders to fail. They expect physical files, not dropbox links. It took me some time to find out what had happened. And while I was freeing up disk space, a tug of war between dropbox and me happened: I click the cloud button to download the files, the apps would work for a while, before dropbox would remove them from disk again. As a result of this mess of download, delete, sync, and write, some data was damaged and lost. (A few files have their dropbox history lost as well, they just have "Something went wrong" on dropbox website).

This was incredibly frustrating. Dropbox should not be optimizing for my disk space w/o my knowledge or even letting me know. If the disk is running out of my space, it should be my OS warning me, or at least WARN me before pulling something like this.

I'm on v200.4.7134 and macOS 12.7.5

How do I turn this "smart" feature off? Afaik, this could happen tomorrow if I accidentally download something big. I know dropbox has the setting "How do you want to store new files?" That's about new files though. Can dropbox be set to NEVER remove local files? (For the sake of completeness, after I realized what dropbox did, I switched this setting to "available offline", but dropbox was still removing files from disk).

Thank you!

Find more posts tagged with

Desktop

Sync

Mac

Insightful

Closed - Partially Delivered

Comments

Jay

Hi @donoharm, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

If you right click the Dropbox folder itself and mark it as available offline, this will force all files to download and remain on your computer.

You can also set the default setting in the Dropbox desktop application preferences.

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

donoharm

Hello,

Thanks for replying. What is the default setting? "How do you want to store new files?" It says that setting won't affect new files.

This is my setting page:

Walter

The default setting is the policy that will be followed for your files in the Dropbox folder @donoharm

The part that says it won't affect new files is referring to the online only option.

For more information about the version of the desktop app you're using, you can have a look here.

I hope this helps!

donoharm

What do you recommend I change then?

That "How do you want to store new files?" I don't think it works. I immediately changed that setting after discovering the problem, but dropbox was still removing the files in front of my eyes. I clicked download, dropbox removed it a bit later. That's why I concluded that setting was the one.

Nancy

@donoharm, can you clarify how much available space there is currently on your hard drive?

dgoomany

It shouldn't matter. Dropbox shouldn't auto-remove files from your hard drive. In my case I have 100+ GB available but even so I when i re-visit old files I see I have to redownload them which is very frustrating to the point I may cancel my subscription.

GenghisDaniel

I agree with dgoomany, I ended up discovering that Dropbox was deleting files that were supposed to be stored on my computer when I was short on disk space. Even if the default option selected in the preferences was the locally stored option.

I do not know if it happened after a update of the app, provoking the app to lose the option.

But it does not matter, I agree with dgoomany, Dropbox should never be allowed to delete files on my computer even if I have only 1 mb left on it. I want to be the only one to decide which files to delete when my hard drive is full.

So please reassure us that you will make changes that will prevent it from happening, because you did not really respond to dgoomany remark.

wiskord

Same here, this is so annoying. I couldn't work on my projects, because dropbox automatically drops my files "online only" without my permission. Lost a lot of time for constantly downloading my files again and again... The worst thing is when I'm in the place without a WiFi connection...

There is no settings to change this. How is it possible? Please do something with this!

Walter

Hey @wiskord - thanks for sharing your thoughts on this with us.

I'll make sure to pass your feedback on to the team and you can let me know if you have anything else to add.