We are aware of the issue with the badge emails resending to everyone, we apologise for the inconvenience - learn more here.

Forum Discussion

allidav's avatar
allidav
Explorer | Level 4
6 months ago

Can photos I delete from my phone automatically be deleted from Camera Uploads too?

My iPhone photo library is automatically backed up to my Dropbox (which is great) but I find myself having to frequently manually delete photos previously uploaded to Dropbox when I delete them from my iPhone.

 

Is there an option where this can be done automatically? It's easy to accumulate thousands of photos that I no longer need backed up on Dropbox (such as screenshots) and manually deleting them can be very time consuming. Ideally there should be a rclone type synchronization feature added to the the Dropbox iPhone app.

 

Thank you.

  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Thanks for posting to the Dropbox Community, allidav!

     

    The "sync" between your phone and the Dropbox app through Camera Uploads is actually one-way.

     

    That's why the photos you delete from your phone, don't get deleted from Camera Uploads.

     

    I will however, pass your feedback along to our team about this.

     

    If you have any questions, let me know.

    • allidav's avatar
      allidav
      Explorer | Level 4

      Thanks, there are several 3rd party Android apps that will actually do a normal sync instead of just only one-way uploads.

      On iOS though I’ve not been able to find an app that does a normal sync and isn’t one-way uploads only like the Dropbox app itself.

      • allidav's avatar
        allidav
        Explorer | Level 4

        I did finally manage to find a workaround to accomplishing this, though it requires some manual work.

         

        1- Using the Mac Photos app, I do an export all and save all my photos to a new folder on my computer.

         

        2- I copy this new folder to Dropbox and let it finish syncing. Dropbox seems to be smart enough to not re-upload any identical files that's already on Dropbox, so the sync is done very quickly as it only uploads just the new files.

         

        3- I delete the old folder that still contains photos I have deleted from iCloud and this new folder becomes my latest synced copy.