Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

paul_skinnerlet's don't pivot to alternatives. This is a solved issues using .gitignore type syntax.

.dbignore is what we want, it should be absolutely clear that's the solution and it absolutely needs to be implemented and Dropbox has been a nuacence for their sheer lack of innovation over the last decade for their primary use case; file sync.

Hello,

Please implement filters for synchronizing. Allow filtering by any available metadata. Creation date, file type, file size, file name contains "x" etc.

This could be implemented as a contextual menu ( "Filter" ) with sub items ( "Never Sync", "Always Sync", "Sync When" ) and conditionals. Creating one of these conditional filters would add it to a list of filters that are accessible and editable in the GUI. A "Filters" pane in the Dropbox menu item would be another fine implementation.

i.e.

"Never Sync" IF [filetype] is ".idlk"

"Never Sync" IF [created date] IS BEFORE [date]

"Always Sync" IF [file size] IS LESS THAN [size] 

"Sync When" [time of day] IS AFTER [time]

Manually adding every item of a particular extension to the ignore list to be ignored is tedious and unmaintainable. When ignore lists become extremely long additional performance issues may arise.

Add, at a minimum, customizable file-type based sync filters. 

This feature (or rather this thread)...

• was created 8.5 years ago (‎12-18-2014)
• has 1,342 up votes
• has 956 replies or comments
• has 455,000 views

It's disappointing to see that Dropbox hasn't made this feature a higher priority.

-- Jeff Sorensen

A basic gap with the Ignored files feature is that a .dropboxignore file would be synced across device. So it'd automatically preserve the configuration across multiple Dropbox instances (or migrations). It'd also make it possible to apply broadly on all files matching a pattern (e.g. excluding *.tmp), and be much more practical to manage than having to run a Powershell script.

A partial workaround in the meantime could be to use ChatGPT to generate a Powershell script that takes a .dropboxignore file as input and produces equivalent commands, but it wouldn't help if the goal is to exclude files or folders based on a wildcard pattern (meaning more files could be created that'd match the pattern but would not be ignored unless the script is re-run).

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know that we are actively considering the suggestions you’ve made so far.

We wish we could provide an exact deadline (as we completely understand the expectation), however, our team is committed to providing a solution that meets your needs.

Stay tuned and thanks for your patience so far!

저도 그 기능은 꼭 생기면 좋을 것 같습니다^^

+1

AndreiDIt's been 8 years and 4 months now, so it might still take some time. The crew at Dropbox tried to sell us a solution a couple of months ago, but they were completely off the mark and clearly did not understand the requirements - even after several years of investing time on it.

There are a number of other alternatives, like MEGASync, you can try in the mean time.

Any news on this being implemented? Also looking for a ".gitignore" style solution.

Justin from Just Front-end 

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The main issue I see, is that you’d be giving up the ability to actually have a folder named “node_modules”, that actually can be synced.

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With regex you can be fairly explicit as to what you want to include and exclude. I don't see this as a major issue.

The point is a ".gitignore" style solution is not rocket science and I think at this point we are just generally disappointed in the lack of action/urgency from the dropbox business. Many technical users like me have moved on to alternatives. Right now I'm only still on this discussion to see if and when dropbox will ever listen to their community of users. It makes for a great case study.