I've created a file called ".cleandropbox.sh"

Here's how it works.

realize you have a problem

the problem is that dropbox takes 3 days to empty recently offloaded-to-the-cloud files. This is because it wants to save bandwidth and if you change your mind on a file being online-only it can easily move it from a temp folder back into whatever folder it was in easily.

But when you're trying to clear terabytes of storage quickly for an edit deadline, it's helpful to be able to move this process along.

Please note that this only removes files dropbox has already hashed and confirmed are copied reliably to the cloud. Dropbox doesn't put files here until it's sure they're synced with the latest version online.

The only open question I have in this process (and an ambiguity you should be aware of) is I don't know how reliably dropbox handles files disapearing from this folder without it deleting them. It seems to be handling it fine in my year+ of usage of this script, but be weary of deleting any ultra important files this way.

I use this mostly for media files I have other backups of, and I have a dropbox account with unlimited business storage and history & undelete turned on. You use this script at your own risk.

make a text file

cleanDropbox is a terminal function made possible by a little text file that contains this simple terminal script which empties your local dropbox cache - you'll have to make your own and rename the file path in my script below to match your dropbox directory.

You can make your own by creating cleandropbox.txt and editing it to have the following contents:

#!/bin/bash

function cleanDropbox() {
		cd ~/Lander\\ Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/
		rm -rf old_files/
		cd ~
}

For most people that will just be this:

#!/bin/bash

function cleanDropbox() {
		cd ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/
		rm -rf old_files/
		cd ~
}

note how I removed "Lander" (the name of my company) and the white space from the name of my dropbox path.

rename the text file

now that you've done that, rename the file ".cleardropbox.sh" - note that the final command is called cleaNdropbox, I have named the file cleaRdropbox to make them distinct so the following steps don't get confusing.

place the text file

Now,