Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

References to simlilar requests/comments to show we are not exaggerating:

• https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-ideas/Ignore-folder-without-selective-sync/idi-p/5926/
• https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-ideas/Reconsidering-quot-Ignored-quot-feature/idi-p/453560
• https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-files-folders/How-to-manually-stop-sync-of-a-folder-but-stil...
• https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs-integrations/Feedback-on-the-new-desktop-app-quot-i...
• https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-files-folders/I-don-t-see-the-option-to-ignore-a-folder-with...
• https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-Business-ideas/Exclude-temp-files-from-sync-by-pattern-exten...

This would be amazingly useful, just like a .gitignore.  Dropbox's selective sync extremely difficult to use because it needs to be set up on every single device.  the ability to drop a ".dropboxignore" file in a folder would make like so much easier.

The provided solution with com.dropbox.ignored flags are not without issues.

1. On computer A, I build an app and it creates node_modules.  That folder gets synced to my other computers.

2. I ignore the folder on computer A, and the folder gets deleted from the other computers.

3. Now I do a build on computer B. That creates node_modules on computer B, and now that folder now gets synchronized to my other computers. But that results in the existing folder on computer A is being renamed "node_modules (Ignored in conflict)".

4. I can now ignore node_modules on computer B and the folder disappears on my other computers.

5. I now have to rename the folder on computer A back to node_modules.

If Dropbox had listened to its customers and just created a git style .ignorefolders kind of file, everything would have been much easier. And let's face it. This is mostly an option for computer professionals anyway.

I creates this powershell scripts that reads a .dropboxignore file and set all the folders recursively to be ignored.

# https://help.dropbox.com/en-us/files-folders/restore-delete/ignored-files

$ignoreList = Get-Content .dropboxignore
$folderList = Get-ChildItem -Path . -Recurse -Directory -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object FullName
$baseList=@()
"Ignoring the following folders:"
$ignoreList

""
foreach ($folder in $folderList)
{
foreach ($ignore in $ignoreList)
{
$ignore = $ignore.Trim()
$index = $folder.FullName.IndexOf($ignore)
if ($index -ge 0 )
{
$base = $folder.FullName.SubString(0, $index+$ignore.Length)
if ( ! $baseList.Contains($base))
{
$base
Set-Content -Path "$base" -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1

$baseList = $baseList + $base
}
break
}
}
}
""
"Folders ignored:"
$baseList

# Clear-Content -Path 'C:\Users\yourname\Dropbox\ (Personal)/YourFileName.pdf' -Stream com.dropbox.ignored
# Set-Content -Path C:\Users\lars\Dropbox\RaiseYourFinger\node_modules -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1

It's not perfect, but it suits my needs.

I realize this original topic is 6 years old, but I agree, something like a .gitignore would be incredibly helpful.  I've got an issue where I'm synching game saves on dropbox using symlinks (which works wonderfully, for the most part), but a specific game uses a ".new" directory as some kinda diff check/temporary cache when it autosaves.  Dropbox attempting to synch is messing with the autosave (but not manual save, thankfully), and worse, when I set the directory to Ignored, because it's a temporary directory, the Ignored status goes away every single time the directory is deleted and re-initialized.

Having any sort of pattern matching for exclusion instead would be an incredibly powerful feature.

I would like to see the feature like git has: .gitignore file where I can list specific folders and file names mask preventing them from syncing. I have tons of node_modules folders, *.tmp, *.log files. They are part of the projects and they consuming a lot of space but I don’t need them in my Dropbox. Selective sync is not the solution for this.

Hi everybody. As I am sharing quite some development projects in my Dropbox, I am facing the very same issues especially with folders which are deleted and re-created by build tools. I just published a first release of my little helper:

https://github.com/mweirauch/dropignore

It's a cross-platform command line application which allows you to configure a set of patterns to look for and ignore them if matching with the extended attribute method. I am only using it on a Linux distribution. MacOS and Windows builds are there, but haven't been tested except for integration tests.

Hope it's useful to someone.

PS: Please consult the README and search any open or closed issues before posting a new bug.

PPS: Please refrain from posting questions in the issue tracker. Thanks!

I have now moved on to tresoreit.com which has this featured built-in. It's almost the same price as dropbox and the desktop client doesn't seem to hog any CPU or RAM on my computer.

I followed the guide on this page:

https://support.tresorit.com/hc/en-us/articles/217103697-Exclude-specific-file-types-from-sync-advanced-

and I was able to ignore folders like node_modules and vendor (PHP packages folder).

It's a shame dropbox has decided to pivot from a cloud-based backup tool to what seems like a path to being an email client with google docs built-in.

It's been 6 years since this feature request was created and it clearly tells us where their priorities lie now, which was from being a file backup tool to now being google docs with half-baked file-backup utility built-in.

So long, Dropbox

I’ve already switched to Sync. Not only does it have this feature in an easy to use GUI, it’s less expensive. Even the free tier offers 5GB to Dropbox’s 2GB.

It just barely exists, and many commenters above have brought up issues with that proposed solution.

What we actually need is the ability to tell the Dropbox indexer patterns to ignore itself so that it can stop trying to process all files like, "node_modules", "vendor", "build", etc. that don't need to be synced.