It was not that late when Dropbox introduced the new Camera Upload feature. This feature is more designed and featured on mobile devices, wherein photos and videos captured from the device’s camera will automatically be uploaded to a signed-in Dropbox account via a Dropbox app.
However, we understand your confusion about the safety regarding deleting the original files as to whether it will delete the backed-up files as well. This question is perfectly understandable, as it draws from Dropbox’s 2-way syncing feature wherein a file delete from a device will also be deleted on all other devices.
To start with, by default, the Dropbox downloadable app already includes the camera upload feature upon installation, and unless settings or preferences have been modified for that particular device, all camera files will be uploaded—at least when you get a data connection whether via WiFi or mobile data service, depending on what you chose.
All uploaded files are not simply stored in a pre-set folder as you would expect on any other types of files, but rather, Dropbox puts all the camera uploads in a special section or page called Photos. Logging in to your Dropbox account online, you can see this section or tab right below the Dropbox tab which is found on the left side of the screen. The purpose of this special section is its coded design for image viewing, wherein users are given easier navigational and sharing options for these particular file types.
To know if files have been uploaded to the cloud or not, all you have to do is to log-in online to your Dropbox account and check on the section if the new photos have been uploaded. Since the default storage for all your camera files on your device is set locally or on your memory card, it is then safe to delete the local files after syncing since the directory is not connected with your Dropbox account. This would prove worthy especially if you are saving space on your local storage.
In this regard, the uploaded photos will only be deleted if you accessed the Photos page via the Dropbox app and deleted them. In this way, all the photos deleted will also be deleted in every other linked device as part of the sync function. Remember that, by default also, the Camera upload feature does not delete the local camera files on your device, not until you delete them manually.
Finally, the best thing to do to avoid deleting camera files that have not yet been backed up is to enable the automatic Camera Upload feature on your device, or to ensure that the feature is on. To further secure that the files are properly backed and synced, you can check them using the Dropbox app or going online to your account before actually deleting them locally.
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