Smartphones now regularly come with 16-20MP cameras that can spit out huge image files. At the same time, many device makers continue to insist on making 16GB of internal storage the norm. These two trends are in direct opposition, and your photos are caught in the middle. Dropbox has long offered automatic backup of photos, but an update to the Carousel app will now let you free up space without losing anything important.
When installed, Carousel takes over backup duties from the regular Dropbox app. Each time you snap a photo, it is added to your online storage automatically. Let’s say you need to shoot a video or take a few pictures, but your lowly 16GB phone says it’s out ofstorage. What do you do? Frantically delete old photos and hope you don’t accidentally get rid of something you need? Carousel can simply delete all your local photos and videos, but only after making sure they are safe and sound in Dropbox.
Carousel will notify you when storage is low so you can delete local files, but you can also go into the settings at any time to save some space. Every file you upload has a unique hash that is used to check files before deleting them. If something hasn’t been backed up, it remains on your device until it’s in the cloud.
Carousel is laid out like a gallery app, so it’s almost like you still have the files saved locally. You can also share images and videos directly from the app. The new space saving features are already rolling out to Android devices, but the iOS app has to go through Apple’s approval process, which should take about a week. Dropbox recently boosted its basic Pro plan to 1TB of storage — a lot more than you have on your phone.
