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Retry online-only when a file stops being in use

Benjamin Gordon

If a file is open when you mark it online-only, the eviction fails permanently and silently. There is no way to see which files failed and no way to re-trigger them, so on a large account they accumulate until a substantial part of the disk is held by files the user already told Dropbox to remove. In my case 1.39 TB. The usual culprit is QuickLook, invoked just by browsing the folder in Finder, so simply looking at a folder can permanently pin files. Please queue failed evictions and retry them when the handle is released, and show which files are still local against the user's wishes.

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Desktop

Sync

Mac

Open

Status: Open

Comments

Keith

Hi @Benjamin Gordon, thanks for sharing this idea.

At the moment, this is expected behavior. Having Dropbox monitor and apply sync preference changes once a file is no longer open or in use is an interesting suggestion, though it would be a large change to how things currently work.

I’ll open this up for community voting so we can see how much interest there is.

For anyone else reading, if you’d like to see Dropbox retry online-only changes when a file stops being in use, please upvote the idea and let us know whether you’re using Mac or Windows. Thanks.