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Tom_M's avatar
Tom_M
Helpful | Level 6
11 years ago
Status:
Delivered

Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

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

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1,036 Comments

  • Mark Cerqueira's avatar
    Mark Cerqueira
    New member | Level 1
    11 years ago

    You can "hack" file ignore by tricking Dropbox by first setting up a folder with the same name as the file you want to ignore. Check out the instructions here: http://superuser.com/a/757498

    It'd still be nice to have this natively built in though.

  • Mark Cerqueira's avatar
    Mark Cerqueira
    New member | Level 1
    11 years ago

    I have my iTunes folder in my Dropbox. It makes no sense to sync iTunes Library.xml since that isn't used by iTunes (it only uses iTunes Library.itl). But I am unable to configure Dropbox to simply ignore iTunes Library.xml.

  • Cwood's avatar
    Cwood
    Helpful | Level 5
    11 years ago

    I am looking for this feature too! like .dropboxignore regex!

  • Kaue G.'s avatar
    Kaue G.
    New member | Level 1
    11 years ago

    I am looking for this feature too, Node Modules take too much space and its not needed, I am already searching for a better alternative.

  • Christopher N.1's avatar
    Christopher N.1
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    11 years ago

    Hi there,

    Thanks very much for your feedback. At present, there are only a few file types that don't sync to your Dropbox account. See this Help Centre article for more information:

    https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/files-not-syncing

    If there are other files you don't want to sync to your Dropbox, I'd just recommend storing them outside your Dropbox folder.

    Hope this helps!

  • Antoni A.'s avatar
    Antoni A.
    New member | Level 2
    11 years ago

    It will be so useful if I could exclude certain files from syncing based on a file mask. Examples:
    .tmp
    *.xml~
    mailbox.psd
    aa
    .t??