Where are Dropbox files?

jamesino

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2012
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I downloaded Dropbox for android and have it installed on my PC laptop. Might be a silly question, but when I upload a file from my computer to my DB account and open DB with my phone, but DO NOT click "Download," the files are not downloaded onto my phone right? In other words, I have to have an internet connection on my phone to view the files, but they are not taking up memory space on my phone?

When I view a file, say a Word doc, the file gets stored to "/mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.dropbox.android/files/scratch

The file sizes are identical to the actual file sizes that I uploaded. Is this just a temporary storage, such that these files will be deleted within n x period of time? Or will they remain there indefinitely? If the latter, this kinda defeats the purpose of cloud storage if they're just going to be copied onto my phone as well, using up my phone storarge.
 
Last edited:
I think its just a temp file if you don't choose to download it. But if you do download or choose it as an offline file it is saved in that same folder.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Android Central Forums
 
If you don't download it to your phone it will be a temporary file since it isn't actually located on the phone.
 
As soon as you close Dropbox (remove it from the task list; restart the phone; etc.) you'll see that the files in that directory that you haven't actually downloaded disappear. Just remember that there's no 'Exit' menu choice in Dropbox, so if you just switch to another app it remains open until you manually kill it, restart the phone or until the OS closes it because it needs the memory.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk 2
 
On my Galaxy 4 the installation location for my DropBox folder Device Storage/DocumentSync. In the file manager, this full pathway displays as /storage/emulated/0/DocumentSync. Since my DropBox is pretty large it would be nice if it could be relocated to the external SD card. Anyone know how to do this?
 

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