Why the Dropbox constantly makes my files online-only even if I make them local?

[Leo289]

Recently, I found that after I make some files locally, if I leave it aside like 10-20 minutes, I will find them online-only again. It is quite frustrating because it means that I have to constantly make things local in order to work on it. I checked my preference on Sync, it sets "available offline" for new files. I suspect, is there something called smart sync, which automatically make files online once your local storage is low? But this happens when my computer still have 260GB storage. So it's just weird.

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi @Leo289, could you try instead right clicking the file and choosing Make available offline and let us know if you experience this issue on those files as well?

[Leo289]

So far, with "Make available offline", the issue doesn't appear. It seems the green tick is a guarantee. 

[Nancy]

Hi again, Leo! It looks like this is the cause of the issue. To make your files local on the desktop app, you need to right click on them directly and select the relevant option from the menu. Clicking on the cloud icon isn’t what we generally recommend in order to do this.

If the issue arises again though, let us know.

[ginodimeo]

This has been a massive bugbear for me too since the Dropbox update after Ventura. And the inability to stop the process of making files available offline if you accidentally click the icon, which was possible beforehand.

[ginodimeo]

By the way, the right-click solution doesn't work for me – if you do this with a folder it doesn't make the contents online, so the only solution is to click the cloud icon. But to say that Dropbox don't recommend doing this is weak – just fix it. People have been complaining about the numerous bugs on the post-Ventura Mac update from the the get-go. It's incredibly frustrating.