Need to free up space on your phone? Business apps can take up a lot of storage, but so can photos and videos. And if your business phone is also your personal phone, you're likely to reach your storage capacity sooner than you expected. If you use Dropbox, however, there's an easy way to instantly reclaim space on your phone.
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Popular cloud-storage startup Dropbox said today at the Dropbox Open London conference that it’s working to let you access your files through the Finder as you normally would, but without taking up storage space on a Mac until they’re actually needed—no matter how small your hard disk, no matter how much stuff’s in your Dropbox. Code-named Project Infinite, the initiative will let you.
Carousel, Dropbox's photo-viewing app, now lets you quickly free up space on your phone by deleting photos and videos that are backed up in Dropbox. The update is a welcome addition to the Carousel app, which also automatically backs up photos and videos to Dropbox and lets you easily share photos by email, SMS, Facebook and Twitter.
Here's how the new feature works and when it will be available. [Dropbox for Business: Top 3 Features]
How it works
Carousel works in the background, so you don't have to worry about manually checking your storage and using the delete feature. Just as your phone alerts you when your storage is nearing full capacity, Carousel will automatically send you a notification with an option to delete photos that have already been backed up on Dropbox. It will then take you to the Carousel Settings page, where the app will show you how much space you can free up by deleting backed-up photos. Just tap the 'Free up (X) MB of space' button, and you're good to go.
When you want to view the photos you've deleted from your phone, just open the Carousel app or access your Dropbox account as you usually would. With Carousel, photos are viewable even when your phone is offline, without taking up space on your phone.
To start freeing up space on your phone, download the Carousel update for Android from Google Play.
The new feature will be available on iOS devices soon, but it will only be compatible with iOS 8.0+. The iOS version also comes with a few caveats: The app will not let you delete burst photos and edited photos, and does not automatically free up space after photos are deleted. Instead, deleted photos are sent to your Recently Deleted album — a default setting in iOS 8 — where you'll need to manually delete these photos permanently to reclaim space.
Carousel's new update also includes Flashback, a new tool that lets you go back in time and view old photos. Enable the feature in the Settings menu, and select a time period to take a walk down memory lane.
Cloud storage can provide an incredible solution to your limited hard drive space and file-organization nightmares, but it can also be an expensive headache for users who don't know how to get started. As a person who has used and paid for storage through Apple's iCloud, Dropbox and Google Drive for an extended period — at one point, simultaneously — I've identified all their strengths and quirks so you don't have to.Overall, I've found Google Drive to be the most versatile, affordable solution of the three, as well as the easiest to use. Here's why: