Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

@Ben C.21

I did not do adequate research. The selective sync dialog says "If your hard drive is full, you don't necessarily need to delete files. If you have enough Dropbox space, you can instead use selective sync" and, because the opposite is not explicitly mentioned anywhere obvious, I stopped looking.

If anyone else is still confused, here's the roundabout way I used the dropbox GUI to stop syncing a folder:

1. Move everything inside the target folder to some other folder outside of dropbox

2. Open the selective sync dialog, select the target folder, hit OK. This folder will be deleted.

3. Create a new folder of the same name in the same location, move everything back into this folder

Buuutttt since you poked fun at developers for not being able to figure this out, I did what I should have done a long time ago: `man dropbox` and lo and behold the dropbox command line interface comes complete with beautifully simple exclude functionality!

From the command line the solution is super simple: `dropbox exclude add /path/to/folder` (as mentioned here: https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/selective-sync-overview .. again, I clearly didn't do enough research before jumping to conclusions)

Thank you Ben C.21, my love for dropbox has been restored!

I think most of the people here are aware of selective sync so the question is not what we already have in dropbox but what we want there. .dropboxignore or similar way to deal with pattern based ignoring method which could enable you to selective sync "files."  Further  we are also talking about the automatic addition of folders into the dropbox which creates extra workaround if you want to have files in your machine not in the cloud. 

I think dropbox is ignoring this issue is about business. They want all to fill their free drives as fast as possible so that people will be compeled to buy their extra space. I can see this is only the most logical reason behind. 

@jmmk

Yes, I'm aware that many people want a pattern-based solution, and I would warmly welcome it. That said, you can't definitively say that that is what this "idea" is all about when the OP himself suggested a possible non-pattern based approach that you consider unhelpful in the idea description that people have voted for.

Again, I just wanted to point out that it is already possible to easily exclude local folders like node_modules from syncing, as a number of commenters have implied that they did not realise this was possible even on an individual, manual basis.

@Ben C.21 I think you know that this is not the feature everyone is asking about. Being able to check a box for _one_ folder on _one_ machine is not helpful. Most of the requests here are about ignoring entire classes of directories from being synced (dependency directories like "node_modules", build directories like "target"), and this is not possible in Dropbox.

@TAM+CZ A.

My point is that it is possible - not "technically", but actually - and very easy, even though it is not as straightforward as it should be. But a lot of people have been commenting saying that this makes Dropbox unusable for them, which is simply not true, they just don't understand how Selective Sync works (which is a little odd considering many of them are clearly devs). But I agree that Dropbox should improve it; my suggested solution is that when you deselect a folder for syncing it should ask whether you want to remove the local copy but leave it in the cloud and on other devices, or vice-versa, instead of assuming you just want to remove the local copy. I agree an option for whether to automatically sync new folders would be good - ideally you would choose between never sync, always sync, or inherit from parent.

I was interested to read about OneDrive, which I already use, but hadn't explored its selective sync features. I've had a play, and as far as I can tell it works exactly like Dropbox - when I enabled selective sync and created a new folder it was automatically enabled for syncing. New folders inside unsynced folders are not synced. Can you confirm exactly how you think it works differently?

@bohende

yes there are alternatives, check out my post here.  And fyi, I am not a Microsft employee or anything like that, I'm just a long time Dropbox user that's tired of them not listening.  So I tried out something new, plain and simple.

@Ben C.21

Yes "technically" there is a selective sync feature, but the problem is as you stated - not user friendly.  And much more than that, the auto-inheriting of new folders is just ridiculous, and Microsoft has already proved how easy it is to solve with just a simple checkbox in their OneDrive interface.  So what excuse is there for Dropbox to not do the same?

Just another reminder - since many people are still complaining about it - that Dropbox's Selective Sync feature ALREADY allows you to exclude node_modules (or any other folder) from your Dropbox account and keep them only on local machines. It's what I do.

It's just a bit more fiddly and not user-friendly if you're trying to keep local files from being copied to the cloud rather than the other way round, but it can still be done easily enough.

Has dropbox even acknowleged this feature yet? Not having this feature is one thing but ignoring 419+ requests is pretty outrageous.

Are there dropbox alternatives that do offer this feature? node_modules is such a waste of space/bandwidth...

Please check out the post I made here.  I can't believe it took me so long to try something different.

Been using Dropbox for many years, but if they can't add the possibility to exclude folders in selective sync, without deleting them, then I'm unfortunately gonna have to find me a new service that can.