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I have bunch of usual stuff going on in my phone (Samsung Grand, Android 4.1.2) like app auto-updates, Twitter, Dropbox, etc. Most of the time it's clear what the network-related settings for them are (wifi-only all the things) and they are clearly reflected in data stats.

The one exception is "CloudAgent" process, which:

  • does not really make it obvious what it belongs to (is this part of Android? Samsung custom stuff?)
  • eats space like crazy (its folder was well over 1GB out of 4GB system space)
  • eats network, even when not on wifi

While it doesn't really cause any serious issues, it is highly confusing - what it is, what it does and which settings control it?

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It's Samsung software, built into the system in certain Samsung phones. Like the Dropbox app, it's a service to automatically upload photos you take on your phone; it connects to your "Samsung account" if you create one. It also integrates with Dropbox to sync photos to the device Gallery; if you have "Camera upload" turned on in Dropbox as well, this probably results in your phone having two copies of each photo: the usual one, and one in CloudAgent's storage.

You can change its settings by going into the main Settings app and choosing Cloud from the Applications manager list (in the Device section). You can clear its data and disable it, or "freeze" the app if your device is rooted, and the only consequence is that photos from Dropbox won't show up in Gallery. If you have the Dropbox app installed as well, Dropbox can still sync (and automatically upload photos) without CloudAgent running.

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    Gotcha... Figured out that it corresponds to "Cloud" in settings indeed and the reason it was eating space (and probably network) is that there was a setting enabled there to sync all of my Dropbox images to Android's gallery (which I don't really use so paid no attention). Disabling that cleared giant cache out and stopped Dropbox stuff from appearing in gallery (uploads still work as usual).
    – Rarst
    Jun 1, 2013 at 20:26
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    Thanks for your extra information: I've added that into my answer, to help future visitors.
    – Dan Hulme
    Jun 1, 2013 at 20:31
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    Sure, that's how we roll on SE. ;) Note that this does not seem to be tied to auto-upload feature (which is of Dropbox and enabled in its app), this seems to be some extra Samsung built to auto-download from Dropbox to integrate in gallery. Phone came with +50GB Dropbox promo, so I guess Samsung felt obliged to ruin it with some extra bells and whistles. :)
    – Rarst
    Jun 1, 2013 at 20:35
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    An auto-download from Dropbox feature on a phone with a 50GB promo sounds like a really easy way to run the phone out of system space, even if it's limited to images.
    – Velociraptors
    Jun 2, 2013 at 2:11
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    Just FYI, if you disable the dropbox sync, it will NOT delete the data from SDCard. I used ES File explorer to remove the files from the folders under cloudagent directory off the [internal]sdcard.
    – PasadenaGeek
    Sep 16, 2013 at 20:10

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