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danzilber's avatar
danzilber
Helpful | Level 5
5 years ago

Dropbox Cache taking up too much space

Hi everyone,   I seem to be having a significant issue with my dropbox, specifically cache.   Over the past week, I noticed that the storage available on my mac had dropped from 63GB to 4GB (...
Delete
Desktop and Web
desktop app
Mac OS
Space and storage
Storage
  • danzilber's avatar
    danzilber
    5 years ago

    Hi Daphne,

     

    Thanks for the reply :)

     

    The files are downloaded to be local.

     

    It did say it was up to date in syncing. However I think I have found the reason for it.

     

    On my iPad, I use an app called Goodnotes as my note-taking app and have it auto-sync through Dropbox. I believe that once I make an edit to a note, the previous version of it gets put into dropbox cache. As it auto-syncs every time I make an edit, I believe that this is the cause, as I have been editing one note for the past few days and when I look into the cache, there are many files all being around 33MB.

     

    One question is, is it possible to limit the amount of cache stored by dropbox? Say either by document versions (last 3 edits of a document) or by storage?

     

    Thanks,

    Daniel

Daphne's avatar
Daphne
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
5 years ago

Hey there danzilber,  I hope you're well today!

 

When the desktop app is syncing, the cache folder holds the temporary files created during this process. As your desktop app seems to still be syncing your files, this would explain why the cache folder was repopulating.

 

Just to clarify, are you downloading your files to be local or online only on your computer? 

 

Also, did the sync finish and the app show "Up to date" or is the sync status still showing that it's trying to sync files but can't due to lack of space? If possible, please send a screenshot of the error (excluding any personal info).

 

Let me know and we can go from there!

  • danzilber's avatar
    danzilber
    Helpful | Level 5
    5 years ago

    Hi Daphne,

     

    Thanks for the reply :)

     

    The files are downloaded to be local.

     

    It did say it was up to date in syncing. However I think I have found the reason for it.

     

    On my iPad, I use an app called Goodnotes as my note-taking app and have it auto-sync through Dropbox. I believe that once I make an edit to a note, the previous version of it gets put into dropbox cache. As it auto-syncs every time I make an edit, I believe that this is the cause, as I have been editing one note for the past few days and when I look into the cache, there are many files all being around 33MB.

     

    One question is, is it possible to limit the amount of cache stored by dropbox? Say either by document versions (last 3 edits of a document) or by storage?

     

    Thanks,

    Daniel

    • Rich's avatar
      Rich
      Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
      5 years ago
      danzilber wrote:

      One question is, is it possible to limit the amount of cache stored by dropbox? Say either by document versions (last 3 edits of a document) or by storage?

      There are no such settings.

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