If you are new to Dropbox, you may have seen a folder called “Camera Uploads”. What is Camera Uploads? It’s a feature in the Dropbox mobile app that automatically syncs the pictures you take on your smartphone (iPhone, Android, etc.) and automatically uploads them to your Dropbox account. This short blog post and the two videos shows how Camera Uploads works, and how you can manage the storage space and photos in it.
As you can imagine, Camera Uploads takes care of a big problem — syncing photos between your smartphone and PC. It happens wirelessly in the background when the app is turned on, so you don’t even have to think about it.
But Camera Uploads causes a few problems:
- The uploaded photos and movies eat up your Dropbox storage space
- The photos aren’t organized into albums
The following video and the linked blog post I wrote earlier this year show you how to manage Camera Uploads. The video shows you how to delete photos, either one at a time or in batches. The blog post shows you how to use Dropbox Photos, to organize the pictures in Camera Uploads into albums.
For more information about Dropbox and how to get the most out of the desktop and mobile apps, download the ebook or buy the paperback version of Dropbox In 30 Minutes. For more information about Dropbox, visit Dropbox.com.
Video: Manage the Camera Uploads folder
Blog post: What are Dropbox Photos, and how can they help you organize images?
Is anyone aware of a way that once inside the iPhone DropBox app, after it has uploaded your photos from your device, that you can clear the record of those uploads in the app once you’ve renamed/moved/organized into another folder? For example I have plenty of photos previously uploaded, that I have renamed and organized into folders. I noticed if I delete the picture form the camera uploads within the app, it will delete the instance of the folder elsewhere where I have otherwised saved it. Is there a way to “clear” your camera upload “history” there so they’re not always showing and only newer photos get loaded into this tab of the app? Any suggestions or work arounds are greatly appreciated!
I have the same question.
i’ve been deleted some pics in dropbox . but , the problem is i see in my gallery , there is a album “Dropbox” and the photos aren’t reduce . how can i overcome them ?
Hello Veren,
Thanks for your question. It sounds like you have a problem deleting photos in Dropbox. This is a common concern — you may delete photos in one location, but the photos live on elsewhere in your Dropbox account. As I explained in Dropbox In 30 Minutes, there are some extra steps required to permanently delete photos and other files in Dropbox. I have created a video which explains how to permanently delete files in Dropbox, which I hope is helpful.
Good luck,
Ian Lamont
Author, Dropbox In 30 Minutes
“Camera Uploads” is hardly a *synchronization* of your mobile device’s camera and other computers. When you delete something from Dropbox, it stays on the original device’s photo roll, and when you delete something from the photo roll, it stays in Dropbox.
So Dropbox syncs your “Camera Uploads” with other devices, but it doesn’t sync it with the device’s own photo roll, duplicating all photos instead.
Hi. My camera uploads folder is pink and doesn’t give me the options of moving, renaming, etc. Any advise? Thanks, Jill
Hello Jill,
Recently Dropbox changed the color of the Camera Icons folder to pink (instead of blue). It unfortunately cannot be moved or renamed.
Ian Lamont, author, Dropbox In 30 Minutes