Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage space as standard with a Dropbox Basic account. However, even if you have gained some extra bonus space, you may run out of space. How can you clean up Dropbox? By taking a good look at how you handle your storage. The automatic uploading of photos, for example, turns out to be a huge waste of space. You save a lot of files unnoticed that you actually don’t need at all. That’s why 5 tips to thoroughly clean up your Dropbox storage space.
- #1 Critically browse the Dropbox Camera Uploads folder
- #2 Clear your Dropbox cache
- #3 Don’t upload screenshots to Dropbox
- #4 Compress files before uploading
- #5 Prevent Dropbox from eating up your hard drive
#1 Critically browse the Dropbox Camera Uploads folder
The Dropbox app can automatically upload all the photos and videos you take to Dropbox’s online storage. You set this on the Settings tab under the Camera Uploads option. This feature is very useful because if you ever lose your iPhone, you won’t lose all your loved photos. However, you will also unnoticed take a lot of photos that you don’t really want to keep: photos of meals, ten of the same photos of the same event, photos of a night out, most of which have failed… It’s worth looking through the Camera Uploads folder. to see which photos you no longer want to keep. For example, selfies are fun for a while, but not all of them are fun enough to still have in a few years.
Open your Dropbox account and go to the Camera Uploads folder. If you are a business user, you will find the Camera Uploads in the Personal folder.
#2 Clear your Dropbox cache
The Dropbox cache is automatically emptied every three days. If you need storage space immediately or want to delete sensitive files, you can immediately empty the cache. To do this on the Mac:
- Open the Finder on the Mac and press Shift-Command-G.
- Copy and paste the following destination: ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache
- You will now go directly to the Dropbox cache folder.
- Drag the unwanted files from this folder to the trash.
#3 Don’t upload screenshots to Dropbox
If you regularly take screenshots and screen recordings on Mac, you know that things can get messy at some point. The screenshot feature allows you to automatically save screenshots and screenshots from your Mac to your Dropbox account. When you enable this feature, the following happens:
- Screenshots and screenshots are automatically saved in a folder called Screenshots.
- A link to the screenshot or screenshot is copied to your clipboard for easy sharing.
This sounds very handy, of course, but it also means that your Dropbox storage will slowly fill up with screenshots that you will never look back at. It is therefore a good idea to see if you can not completely empty the folder. Screenshots often have a limited shelf life: after a week you no longer need them. So clean them up!
#4 Compress files before uploading
You want to save some photos in high resolution. But there are also photos that are just funny or fun, but you don’t need to have them in full size. You can fix this by compressing the photos with apps like ImageOptim. ImageOptim ensures that photos take up less space, without the quality deteriorating significantly. Only choose photos that you don’t want to print or use in photo collages in the future.
For documents, you can first put them in a zip file so that they take up less space.
#5 Prevent Dropbox from eating up your hard drive
A completely different problem is that Dropbox files take up too much space on your Mac. This is because you also store (almost) all Dropbox files locally on your Mac’s hard drive. Fortunately, you can fix this by enabling selective sync.
How selective sync works:
- Open your preferences in the Dropbox desktop app.
- Click the Sync tab.
- Under Selective sync, click Choose folders (Mac) or Selective sync (Windows).
- Check the folders you want to save on the hard drive.
- Uncheck folders you want to delete.
- Click Update.
This feature is available to all Dropbox users, even if you have Dropbox Basic.
How smart sync works:
Paying users with Dropbox Plus, Family, Professional or Business have an additional option: Smart Sync. You can also free up hard drive space with smart sync. Instead of completely deleting files and folders, you can make files and folders online-only. They will still be visible on your computer, but will only be stored in your online Dropbox account. As soon as you want to use the file you have to download it first.
An automatic setting is also available that makes files and folders online-only based on how you use them.
