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Please please please can you add a feature that allows folders to be excluded from the Dropbox account (on windows and mac). For sure I'm not the first person to request this, but I'm yet to find a good explanation of why it's not there. A quick google search reveals loads of people also looking for the same feature. I really like the workflow I have with dropbox, but it's getting to the point where I might switch providers in order to allow better selective sync.
I've seen hackish solutions using selective sync, but it would be great if this could be done in one of the following ways:
- global pattern matching eg "node_modules"
- a marker file in the directory like .dropboxignore
- a simple right click context menu "Ignore this folder"
Other than that, keep up the good work. Cheers.
Tom
Idea Status Update
We're launching a closed beta for Ignore Files feature, and we’d love your help testing it out.
1,031 Comments
Takes half hour to move everything to another service. You'll be glad you did.
Ok, so it seems like DropBox has removed the last workaround I had, using selective sync. As soon as I have that enabled for my node_modules folder, I can't create a local one anymore. Before the folder was ignored, now it will always get renamed immediately to somethink like node_modules (Selective sync conflict).
That's it, I'm out. Cancelled my premium plan today.
Not yet implemented???
2-3 days selective sync not work correctly ...
somebody have problems?
And I need the feature in the thread.
My frustration grows...
I have decided to cancel my DB account and I'm now in the process of moving everything to a competittor service.
I decided to also take this oppertunity to reorganise all my data. This required a full sync to a Windows machine I have. However, I have about 600k+ files totaling just under 300GB and you will not believe how the client struggles to index and maintain all these files - the client crashes regularly. Yes, a lot of the files are duplicates, like Python "venv" directories in project directories. BTW: the machine specs is not an issue: 8-core with 32GB RAM.
But I find now that when I synced ALL files to a Windows workstation, the client just cannot cope with the large amount of files.
SO I don't see any practical way that DB can cope with my actual work demands going forward. This is it then for me - the last straw so to speak... Cheers DB.
Believe it or not, I find it hard to find a solution that is as reliable as DB and has the same amount of integration with other services (e.g. synology cloud sync).
edit: last time I wanted to try pcloud it told me that it requires FUSE on macOS, which does not seem to be updated for the most recent version of macOS (catalina), however version 3.8.4 of pcloud seems to be updated for catalina, time to try :-D
After so many hacks, the question becomes why someone would stay on Dropbox when you have to patch everything together. There are plenty of alternatives that are as good as DB, if not better.
I was reluctant to switch off DB due to just being lazy, but moving everything took about 45 minutes and has saved me tremendously. Now everytime I switch branches and need to rebuild/reinstall node_modules folder, I have nothing to worry about. Node modules is ignored out of the box.
I just stumbled across a this work-around. It is kinda obvious but never came to my mind. The idea is to use some local syncing software (e.g. goodsync) that allows filtering analogous to .gitignore to sync a local work directory that contains folders like node_modules with a synced folder that rests in dropbox and is a stripped down version of the full folder. I guess it solves the problem if space is not an issue.
It seems our favorite hackish solution stopped working for me after the recent update. This feature suggestion is undoubtedly the top rated, and is suggested 5 years ago, and now even hacky solution is not working. Given these facts, it becomes more and more reasonable to believe that Dropbox is intentionally preventing the users to take benefit of this feature... Does premium account actually provide this feature, so that's the reason why Dropbox is just keep ignoring this request?
