Child Item

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

Application Affected

(Dropbox app & backup)
Device

(Optiplex 3060 i5-8500, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD)
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)

(Windows 10)
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)

(236.4.5918)

Question or Issue

For the past few days, a folder called "log" within the dropbox system folders, specifically "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Dropbox\logs" is constantly growing and growing.. occupying my entire hard disk! please help..

Not sure if they're at all related, but the following points have recently changed in this computer:

1. I bought a new SSD for backup purposes, which I have set to backup by Dropbox

It's 2TB, 900GB of which are occupied, it's connected over USB and it doesn't seem to actually backup..

2. I removed Avast and installed Bitdefender instead. I was running Malwarebytes and Spybot in parallel, though these have now been removed.

I have noticed that the Tray Assistant almost maxes out my CPU use, as well..

Any ideas of how to troubleshoot/resolve this?

Many thanks!

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Accepted answers

Kristen_Support Engineer

Hi everyone - Thanks for highlighting this issue with the logs running away in size.

We believe we've found the problem and it is fixed in V240, the next Desktop release, which is slated for next week (week of Jan 20, 2026).

If you still have a problem after upgrading next week, please consider opening a support ticket so we can get the to bottom of your issue! We might need more detail than you'd prefer to post in a public forum thread.

All comments

tsomek

PS.
I have noticed that, although it has been running it hasn't actually backed up anything of the 900GB! It has only managed to fill up my system drive to reach 0 free bytes.. the log folder reached more than 300GB in size.
I then killed the dropbox app, which seemed to delete the log contents, but upon restarting the app am noticing it's filling up again quickly..

tsomek

For reference, wanted to upload a couple of screenshots of

The growing folder contents
the status overlay when hoovering over the dropbox icon

And seeing point 2, I have started suspecting older hard disk backups might be messing things up..
The "1TB po.." that it seems to be downloading is an older hard disk, whose backup I have deleted..
So confused with all of this!

tsomek

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?

Walter

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?

tsomek

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!

tsomek

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

tsomek

plus, of course, the bloating is back..

Jay

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.

exouk

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.

jusy

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?

Jay

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

exouk

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

Walter

Thanks for keeping us in the loop on this @exouk - much appreciated.

I just wanted to add that if the reboot doesn't improve matters, you can also try clearing your cache folder.

Let us know of any updates!

exouk

Walter, thank you.
I'm glad to report that deleting .dropbox.cache after I let it fully sync, and a reboot has finally fixed the issue.
I think part of the issue was DB could not fully sync due to running out of HD space.
I hope some of the details on this post help others.

All the best.

Megan

Hi @exouk, thanks for the info here!

Happy to see that your issue is now resolved! If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way. 😇

Jasper B.3

Just registering for updates as I'm also experiencing this. It's showstopping so I hope dropbox will address this asap

jusy

Unfortunately no success on my side. I stopped dropbox, deleted all files and folders in .dropbox.cache, rebooted, and restarted dropbox.

It created 6 new subdirectories in .dropbox.cache. They remained empty so far for about 2 days, but the problem still exists on my side: It still tries to download over 700,000 files. That number is exactly the same as before. As far as I can see in my log files, very little has been downloaded (if anything at all).

dropbox itself got updated to version 237.4.5655 on my side. Other than that, no obvious change. The log folder still gets filled, but eventually gets deleted after about 1 hour / 10,000 files during daytime (but not when no other processes are running at night).

I should mention that no new files or modified files have been synced since the start of this issue, i.e., for about 12 days now on my side.

I am wondering: What are those files in Users/[UserID]/AppData/Local/Dropbox/instancex (where x=3 on my side). Those are pretty big data base files and get updated regularly. I do not manually want to mess with them, but could they contain what dropbox tries to download (or upload) unsuccessfully - and could some of them be modified or deleted?

Jasper B.3

No change here either. Dropbox will not sync. Even when syncing is paused, it creates 100's of Gb of logs a day leading to data loss on my system drive. After running for an hour or so it also just crashes. I have to stop using the app until this is resolved, despite paying hundreds a year.

Jay

Hi everyone, if you're still experiencing these issues, please could you contact the support team for them to look into this in more detail.

tyarc

I'm also having this problem, log files are taking up my entire C drive causing my entire computer problems. I can temporarily resolve it by quitting dropbox desktop and deleting the logs but then my files don't get backed up! Very frustrating.

Nancy

Sorry to hear that, @tyarc. When did this issue start on your computer approximately? Did you notice this after a specific update of your OS, or your Dropbox app?

Jasper B.3

Just to add that the update that rolled out today has not fixed the sync being stuck or the log file pileup. For now I'll continue not using dropbox. It's been close to two weeks now.

jusy

I eventually got this resolved on my side by logging out from Dropbox by selecting Preferences -> Accounts -> Sign Out on the desktop app.

I deleted all Dropbox logs thereafter (from C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Dropbox\logs) and shut down the computer, then restarted my computer and logged into Dropbox again.

At some point, Dropbox renamed the old Dropbox folder to "Dropbox (Old)". I copied that to an external drive and deleted it from my hard drive to have enough space on my hard drive for the re-initialization step. Then, I selected which folders from dropbox.com should be synced again. That took about 4 days over Thanksgiving for about 1.6TB of data. Once that syncing/downloading had completed, I manually had to copy about 100 files from the "Dropbox (Old)" folder that did not sync previously. Fortunately, I made changes only in a few folders since the problems started on my side, so I was able to track down relatively quickly which files needed to be copied back into the new Dropbox folder.

Clearly, this is not the most elegant solution that required quite some computational/network resources, but as far as I can say, everything has been working fine for me in the past 4 to 5 days since the termination of these steps. No more filling up of the log folder -- and syncing to dropbox.com seems to work fine again.

Apparently, don't try to attempt this with a slow network or if you have limited upload/download capacities!

I hope this won't happen again in the future, but if someone else comes up with a different solution, it still may help others. And if someone figures out what caused this problem in the first place, that also might be helpful for others.

Hannah

Thanks for sharing your feedback and what worked for you, @jusy.

If you come across any other issues, or if the issue returns, please let us know.

Have a great weekend!

Cier

I also encountered the same problem, and I've deleted all the files in the 'logs', waiting for the solution...

Jasper B.3

I'm still having this issue and a reinstall hasn't fixed it. At the point I'm no longer able to use dropbox effectively.

Jasper B.3

After this started happening again yesterday I'd forgotten to disable 'run Dropbox at startup' and today once again the log files completely filled my C: drive causing Ableton Live to crash and corrupt the configuration file due to not being able to save and yet again lost all my carefully setup plugin favourite folders etc, sample locations etc.

So incredibly frustrating and annoying. Please fix this.

I should add that not a single file has been synced while these 10's of GB's of files have been created. This is clearly a bug yet it's not being acknowledged while we all act as QA for you.

bryan123

Adding in here that I've been experiencing this issue for over 6 weeks now too. Same exact problem. I've been using Dropbox for at least 10 years. Support has indicated this is a bug without a timeline for a fix.

Extremely frustrating and reckless to have a bug like this without a workaround or a fix for paying customers who heavily rely on Dropbox.

bryan123

For anyone still dealing with this issue, I finally found a workaround that works.

1. Install this old build from Dropbox: https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101003016/stable-build-233-4-4938/846954
2. Prevent Dropbox auto update from replacing this build. On macOS, you can use: sudo chflags -R uchg /path/to/Dropbox.app (to later undo this once Dropbox releases a fix, you can use sudo chflags -R nouchg /path/to/Dropbox.app)

The logs folder will initially grow a bit (but not nearly the amount and at the same rate it currently does), and will reduce in size once all is in sync again.

Cier

I have solved the problem. I just deleted all the log files in Dropbox, and then logged out of my account from within Dropbox. Then I logged into my account again, and Dropbox re-indexed the files by itself. Now the space size is back to normal.