Dropbox Cache taking up too much space

[danzilber]

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 (of a 128GB SSD). After some digging, I found that the cache was the cause of this. I tried deleting it once I found it to be the cause of me losing storage rapidly, and initially storage went back to normal. However, the next day, it seemed like every minute another GB was being taken up by the cache.

Again, I tried to delete the cache, but as expected, the next day the same thing happened.

I know that dropbox clears the cache automatically every 3 days, but right now dropbox doesn't allow me to sync as I now have less than 1024MB remaining on my hard drive, and I am not sure if after those 3 days the same thing will happen.

Please help me

Thanks,

Daniel

[Daphne]

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 · Accepted solution]

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]

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@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?

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There are no such settings.

[GodGiven]

Please make a feature in settings to set max. volume of cache 

[Nicolas ELBO]

Dear Dropbox team,

My team and I really appreciate our Dropbox Business Advanced, but...

Could one be able to setup a size limit for the volume of files kept in their .dropbox.cache?

After a few months, it has the tendency to saturate the hard drives of my team's computers. I have to access the hidden folder on their laptops and clear the cache regularly.

Being able to configure the max size of the .dropbox.cache per computer/device would be a great feature!

Thank you for your help.

Kindest regards,
Nicolas.