How to make your team’s files online-only to manage hard drive space

Updated Jun 20, 2025

The information in this article applies to certain types of admins on Dropbox Standard, Business, Advanced, Business Plus, and Enterprise plans.

Note: This feature is not currently available to users with Dropbox for macOS on File Provider.

As an admin, you can use dropbox.com to make files online-only so they don’t take up hard drive space. This article explains how admins can manage online-only settings for their teams.

Certain types of admins can change the default setting for how new files are stored and synced in Dropbox. Here’s what to know:

Online-only files are stored online and can only be accessed with an internet connection on dropbox.com. These files don’t take up space on your computer or mobile device, but they do use space in your Dropbox account.
Offline files are stored locally on your computer, tablet, or mobile phone. You can open and edit them without an internet connection, but they do take up space on your device.

If you make changes to an offline file or folder while you’re not connected to the internet, your changes won’t sync to your other devices until you’re back online.

Learn more about how Dropbox syncs your files.

Note: The Dropbox system extension allows you to open online-only files from File Explorer (Windows), Finder (Mac), or third-party applications. Team admins also have the option to uninstall the Dropbox system extension from team members’ computers.

Not using Dropbox yet? See how Dropbox makes syncing files easy.

How to manage your team’s default file sync settings on dropbox.com

Note: The settings an admin chooses here affect all team members.

To manage the default sync settings for your team:

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Under Products, click the dropdown to the left of Dropbox.
Click Settings in the left sidebar.
Under Content, click Sync.
Next to Set new files default, click your preferred default setting:
- Set the dropdown to Online-only to make any new file added to a team member’s Dropbox account default to online-only.
- Set the dropdown to Local to make any new file added to a team member’s Dropbox account default to available offline.
Next to Save hard drive space automatically, click On or Off from the dropdown.
- Note: This setting makes files that team members haven’t opened in a few months automatically become online-only.

Team members can make individual files and folders online-only or local on their own computers and go back to managing their own settings at any time.

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