Dropbox Taking Up Space on Mac: How to Reduce and Manage

Having a cluttered Dropbox account on your Mac can be frustrating and take up valuable storage space.

Dropbox can take up a significant amount of space on your Mac, up to 2GB of storage space if you're using the free version.

To reduce the space Dropbox is taking up on your Mac, start by checking your account's storage usage. You can do this by opening Dropbox and clicking on the gear icon in the top right corner, then selecting "Account settings" and finally "Storage."

By regularly cleaning up your Dropbox account, you can free up space and ensure your Mac runs smoothly.

Many users find that Dropbox takes up too much space on their Mac because it's keeping all the files on the computer.

The issue arises when you use the Dropbox app to backup files, and it stores them locally on your hard drive.

You can check the info for your Dropbox folder to see how much data is locally stored, but in some cases, your Mac may still think the hard drive is full.

For example, one user had a Dropbox folder with 170GB of data, but only 6MB was locally stored, yet their Mac still showed a full hard drive.

This is because Dropbox is designed to synchronize files across all your devices, so it stores a copy of every file on your computer.

To solve this issue, you need to free up space on your hard drive by deleting unnecessary files or moving them to an external drive.

By doing so, you can ensure that Dropbox doesn't take up too much space on your Mac.

To remove Dropbox from your Mac and free up space, you can use CleanMyMac X. This powerful tool allows you to select and remove applications while leaving your important files intact.

You can also manually uninstall Dropbox, but be careful not to delete files. To avoid data loss, create a copy of the Dropbox folder before deleting the app.

Here are the steps to remove Dropbox from your Mac:

Remember to always be cautious when removing applications to avoid losing important files.

Dropbox can take up a lot of space on your Mac if you have synced all your files to the computer. This is one of the most common reasons why Dropbox is eating up your hard drive.

You can make Dropbox files online-only to free up space. This feature is called Smart Sync and it allows you to browse and access all your files in Dropbox without taking up space on your hard drive.

To make files online-only, open File Explorer (or Finder on a Mac) and locate the Dropbox folder. Right-click on the file(s) or folder(s) you want to set online-only and choose Smart Sync, then Online Only.

It may take some time to move local copies from your computer, but when a solid grey circle with a white cloud icon is displayed next to your files, they are fully synced and online-only.

If you're using macOS High Sierra (10.13) or higher, you can also adjust your Dropbox settings to show online-only files as taking up zero space. This can help you identify which files are taking up the most space on your disk.

Here are the steps to adjust your Dropbox settings:

Note that this setting may take some time to update. If you don't see the update reflected after a few minutes, close the Dropbox desktop app and reopen it.

If you're experiencing issues with Dropbox taking up space on your Mac, don't worry, there are solutions available. You can try restarting the Dropbox app to see if it resolves the issue.

To free up space, you can use selective sync, a feature that allows you to specify which folders will be copied locally to your Mac. This can help you remove files from your hard drive and keep them online to free up space.

Here are the 5 effective solutions to consider:

Dropbox can take up a lot of space on your hard drive, causing other programs to fail.

You can try stopping Dropbox from taking up hard drive space by following some useful solutions.

To resolve the issue, you can try the following solutions to free up space:

The solutions include checking for large files, deleting unnecessary files, and more.

If you're experiencing issues with Dropbox taking up too much space on your Mac, don't worry, there are solutions available.

One effective solution is to restart the Dropbox app, which can be done by quitting the app and then relaunching it.

To free up space on your hard drive, you can use selective sync, a feature that allows you to specify which folders will be copied locally to your Mac.

Here are the steps to enable Dropbox selective sync on Mac:

Deleting files from your hard drive is another solution to free up space, but be sure to only delete files that you no longer need.

Clearing the Dropbox cache folder can also help free up space, as it stores temporary files and data.

Setting online-only files to zero "logical" size can also help reduce the space taken up by Dropbox on your Mac.

Finally, merging multiple Dropbox accounts can help reduce clutter and free up space on your hard drive.

Deleting Dropbox from your Mac can be a bit tricky, but don't worry, it's not impossible. Simply dragging the Dropbox icon to the Trash or Bin won't remove all the leftover files and hidden content, so you'll need to uninstall it manually.

To do this, you'll need to take a few extra steps. Quit Dropbox before trying to delete it, as it runs in the background and can make it difficult to terminate the app completely.

Here are the steps to manually uninstall Dropbox:

However, if you're still having trouble deleting Dropbox, there may be leftover files and folders taking up space on your Mac. In this case, using a third-party uninstaller like CleanMyMac X can help remove all the remaining files and free up space on your Mac.

Remember, uninstalling Dropbox doesn't mean deleting your files, so you can rest assured that your important data is safe.