Free space on a Mac without deleting iCloud or Dropbox files

INFO ONLY cloud-synced

Files already synced to iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. Reported only, never deleted.

What it is

Local copies of files that a cloud provider already holds: iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. The provider knows them as synced; your disk knows them as ordinary files.

What it is for

They are the copy you work on. Freeing the space means asking the provider to evict the local copy and keep the file available on demand, which is a sync operation and not a deletion.

Is it safe to delete?

Broza never deletes these. Deleting a synced file with a file manager deletes it from the cloud too, and from every other device, which is exactly the kind of mistake this tool exists to avoid. Broza reports the size and prints the provider's own instructions for freeing it.

What Broza does instead

Cloud-synced files are always INFO ONLY, and no flag changes that: broza clean --category cloud-synced is rejected outright. Broza reports the bytes the provider holds on this disk, per provider, and prints that provider's own steps for freeing them.

Check it on your Mac

Broza is a free, open-source command-line tool. Every command below is read-only except clean, and clean is a dry run until you add --apply.

$ broza explain cloud-synced

$ broza suggest --category cloud-synced

Not installed yet? Install Broza with Homebrew, the installer script, or Cargo.