Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

miromannino I agree, but this possibility made me move back to DB from a little excursion into iCloud drive, which sadly does not offer an ignore option either. 

Yes that is exactly what I do now... I move the node_modules folder somewhere else and I create an empty node_modules folder, then I unsync that and copy the node_modules back where it was. I mean it works, but still it's not convinient.

miromannino To ignore a node_modules folder, for me the old trick still works where you make a backup of the folder you want dropbox to ignore, disable syncing with that folder in the dropbox settings (which REMOVES the folder from your machine), and then just copy it back to the original destination from the backup. Any further changes to that folder should be ignored by dropbox now.

We tried something similar to the approach above but it just got too cumbersome with all the projects rolling through here.

This feature request is marked in their "not for right now" category with 1,014 votes with second place coming in at 171.  They've shown they're not really interested in what their users want.  They're not focusing on what made them popular to begin with - their sync engine.  Much of their attention appears to be on the docs/Paper/Showcse products which to this day I've never seen anyone use.

The only option at this point is to ditch Dropbox.  We will be after our plan runs out.

Not sure if suggested before but I resolved the issue on Mac with manual symlinks.

1. Create a folder named "Symlinked" in ~/Library/Caches
2. Recreate empty ignored folders in a separate directory for each project (like "proj_A/packages", "proj_B/node_modules")
3. Remove ignored folders from Dropbox if they were created previously
4. Create symlinks for each ignored folder:

ln -s  /Users/MyUser/Library/Caches/Symlinked/ProjectA/packages /Users/MyUser/Dropbox/ProjectA/packages

Probably it could be automated but I don't have much stuff, so I just copy-pasted it a couple of dozens of times into the Terminal, changing names of the directories.

I have Dropbox since years and it's been years that I expect it to deliver this feature.

We need more controls on what's syncing because it's no good for computers and for mother earth to send over datas for nothing...

I know it's challenging but you can do it !

wasting data-centers space

Well my node_modules folders can't be syncronized with Dropbox because it's just too much for Dropbox. 

The solution would be a simple file .dbignore that tells Dropbox to ignore folders/files like that.

I guess my only solution is to do not use Dropbox, since with such projects my entire computer (and internet connection) becomes slow with dropbox syncing for hours.

Meaning, I don't really have any more reason to pay for Dropbox. I can't use it for professional reasons. Bye Dropbox.

+1

I moved to pCloud last month after reading through some of the reviews on this thread. And I couldn't be more satisfied. Besides being super-fast, pCloud effectively lets me ignore my node_modules folder.  As a result, everything syncs well, and the pCloud desktop app is way lighter than Dropbox, which burns into memory.

And pCloud lets me backup my Dropbox content as well, so I don't have to waste time in moving my data manually. All in all, a complete win, as far as my problem was concerned.

Have you taken a look at mega.nz? It seems to cover all my required bases in terms of ignoring files.

I've been slowly shifting off of DB and onto Mega