How to Clear Dropbox Cache on Windows, Mac and Linux?

This article tells how easily you can locate the Dropbox cache folder and delete the files in it on Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms.

Dropbox has a hidden cache folder that preserves the deleted files, FYI, Dropbox clears this cache folder automatically for every three days.

If you’ve not looked at this folder till now, you might be losing valuable hard drive space on the Operating System drive.

If your C drive gets full, then the files in the Dropbox folder won’t be synced to Dropbox on the web by showing an error, so for all good reasons, you can delete this cache folder and gain valuable disk space easily.

Dropbox Test Build adds File Identifiers and Long Path Support for files in Windows

Clear Dropbox cache on Windows, Mac, and Linux

Windows:

1. Open the Run command by pressing the Win key +R
2. Type, or copy and paste “%HOMEPATH%\Dropbox\.dropbox.cache” without quotes and press enter
3.  Once the cache folder of Dropbox appears on the screen,
4. Delete the files in that folder by selecting all and further by using the Shift+ Del key combination.

Update: Make sure you’ve already selected “Show hidden files, folders and drives” from the Folder options to view the hidden Dropbox cache folder.

Dropbox now offers the option to disable the ‘Move to Dropbox’ Context Menu Item

Mac

By using the Finder app on Mac, we can able to locate the Dropbox cache folder and delete the files in it. Follow the steps below for the same.

1.  Open the Finder app and select Go to the folder and press Shift -Command-G
2. Copy and paste  “~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache” without quotes and press the return key,
3. Ten the Dropbox cache folder will be shown, and delete the files in it.

Linux

1. Open a terminal window
2. Enter the “rm -R ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/*” command without quotes which removes files in the dropbox directory. [Via Dropbox help]

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