Nowadays, a significant number of people use Dropbox as it is one of the best cloud storage services that enables people to manage and share files, pictures, videos and more. In simple words, Dropbox is an online backup and files hosting service which is used extensively to store and share photos.
Cleanup Dropbox Duplicate Data
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Dropbox can be used on many electronic devices such as a laptop, personal computers, mobiles, and tablets. Dropbox offers different type of accounts keeping in view the requirements of different kinds of users, like Plus and Professional for individuals, and Standard and Advanced for teams.
Dropbox easily syncs all the files from the devices that a user has logged into (from the same account) and makes those files accessible across all such devices. Sometimes in Dropbox, files get hidden due to a couple of reasons. These reasons are:
- The hidden folders appear because the user might have enabled the hidden option on their pc or laptop.
- The Dropbox folder might have been renamed on some device.
So let’s see what you can do to find out the hidden folders in Dropbox.
Hidden Folder Enabled
In case the hidden option is enabled, it creates some hidden files on your computer. These hidden files are named as .dropbox and they keep records of all the Dropbox received and shared folders.
Deleting these hidden files is of no use because sometimes when these hidden files are deleted by the user, the files they contain get duplicated. So deleting these files is not really a handy option and instead of deleting them, applying the right setting to unhide these files would surely be a better the thing to do.
In case the Dropbox folder gets renamed on the computer, it then creates a hidden folder named similar to the old folder on the operating system, these kinds of folders are known as symlink. A symlink is a file/ folder that directs users to another file on the computer. This folder acts like a secondary folder of Dropbox as these hidden files/ folders misdirect users to the new Dropbox folders. In order to avoid these issues, users can delete the symlink file.
To fix the setting on OSX or Windows, users have to follow these simple steps.
- OSX
Go to Utilities.
Double-click the Terminal app.
Write the following command in the Terminal app
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO - Windows 7
Go to Start | Control Panel.
Click on Appearance and Personalization.
Select Folder Options.
Click the View tab.
Select the checkbox for Show hidden files, folders, and drives in Advanced settings.
Click OK. - Windows 8.1
Click File Explorer and then select Options in the View tab.
Click Change folder and search options.
Now click the View tab.
Select the checkbox for Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
Click OK. - Windows 10
Go to the taskbar and type in folder.
Select File Explorer Options.
Selecting from Search Results Click the View tab.
Enable the checkbox for the Show hidden files, folders, and drives option.
Opting to show all hidden files, folders and drives Click OK.
Other than these two reasons, Dropbox already contains some hidden cache files located inside the .dropbox.cache folder which stores deleted files. These cache files help the user in recovering and restoring the deleted files from Dropbox. This feature is helpful but it is also problematic as due to it these hidden cache files take up a lot of space on the hard drive. So the better option to save the space and restoring the speed is to empty these hidden cache files. Here is how you can do so:
- Linux
Open Dropbox.
Go to the .dropbox.cache folder.
Select it and press Delete. - Windows
Go to C:/Users/%username%/AppData/Roaming.
Select Dropbox.
The .dropbox.cache file will appear which can easily be emptied.