First, you might have an issue with syncing. If you don't need everything in Dropbox to be on your hard drive, you can use Smart Sync to see everything but pick and choose the files you need to make sure are synced locally (meaning: taking up space on your hard drive) so you can access them at any time. Here's how to adjust the preferences for what you're actually copying to your computer:
- Click the Dropbox icon in your menu bar
- Click your avatar in the top right corner (profile picture or initials)
- Click Preferences….
- Click the Sync tab
- Under Selective Sync, click Choose folders
- Check the folders you’d like saved on your hard drive. Uncheck the folders you’d like removed
- Click Update
NOTE: This can take awhile to update on your machine, especially if you have lots of large files, or just lots and lots of files and folders.
If you’re running macOS High Sierra (10.13) or higher and you get the error "Your startup disk is almost full”, you can see what's taking up the most space on your disk by following the steps below.
- Click the (apple icon) in the upper-left corner of your desktop.
- Click About This Mac.
- Click Storage.
- Click Manage….
You may see files listed there from Dropbox that aren't actually synced to your machine. You can adjust your Dropbox settings so these online-only files have the size set to zero. To do so:
- Sign in to dropbox.com.
- Click your profile picture (or grey circle) in the upper right corner.
- Click Settings.
- Toggle Smart Sync update for Mac on. (If it's on, turn it off, wait a moment, and turn it on.)
- Note: 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, then reopen it. (Again, if you have many files, or large files, or both, it can take Dropbox a significant amount of time to update.)
If you have trouble with the steps above or any other Dropbox questions, let us know!