Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

MaksMaks991- I completely forgot about this thread as I haven't been active on Dropbox for some time now - but I got the notification of a new post, and yes - you are absolutely right: 3 years with no movement on this idea is just unacceptable.

It is the most asked for feature by a really large margin and it has been for years. I have long since moved on and I have not looked back.

There are a number of really great alternatives that all have this requested feature.

Status changed to: Accepted
11-26-2019 02:52 AM

Are you seriously? Almost three years to complete the feature? Oh wait, it's not completed yet. I can't understand how it's possible. Looks like you're just ignoring your users voices. This feature is pretty simple – it's like .gitignore file in Git.

I see the only reason – with this feature implemented users will be able to free their spaces from garbage and there will not be a reason for them to switch to more expensive plan to have more space. I understand you in some way, it's just a business.

And it's pretty sad because I love Dropbox. I'm your user for almost 10 years, and I have paid plan. But now I see that your Ideas portal is illusion of users can affect the product. This idea is top voted and there is no movement on it for three years. You just don't respect our voices. Yes, you have the name and long history. But please take a look at your competitors, research best features there, be better.

I just switched to MEGA, because of Dropbox lacking this requested feature

> This idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team. 

I would like to emphasize that the idea has received enough votes (see the linked ignore folder post above), but Dropbox hasn't implemented it fully. Dropbox's solution of ignoring a specific folder doesn't scale when you have lots of files across multiple machines. There's no substitute for a .dropboxignore or custom filter lists available in other cloud services.

Unfortunately, no one is finding this particular issue when they are searching, which explains the low number of votes.

Please pass this on to the development team. Other cloud services are implementing user-specified ignore filter lists — Dropbox hasn't. It's a big selling point amongst technical cloud services, of which Dropbox is still the most reliable. This feature is a must-have for professional users.

There needs to be a way to specify ignore folders/files that are software generated, intended to be temporary and local to a specific machine. For instance Microsoft Visual Studio generates a /bin and /obj upon building code, which a developer could do a hundred a times a day. Each time the software deletes the folder and recreates it. Which now you have to close dropbox because it dropbox locks up the folder and Visual Studio fails to build then.  You current process of ignoring a folder is also flawed in another way because it doesn't persist when the temporary folder might be automatically deleted by a program. Maybe borrowing a page from the .git code repository world, a simple solution would be too look for a file named .dropbox_ignore.txt with specified relative paths to ignore like /bin /node_modules /obj. 

I'm a novice with dropbox so please excuse lack of knowledge. I have dropbox on my laptop. I have synced with my iPad and iPhone. In my laptop dropbox folder I have many files and folders which have synced to all devices but I would prefer that only one folder goes to my iPhone - they other files will not be used on the iPhone.  Can I restrict the iPhone sync to just one dropbox folder?

Also, are the files downloaded to the devices or are they just an alias, which means that I would have to be online to read them.

Thank you for any help.

Selective Sync, or the ability to choose what syncs, or not is a feature that has been requested for several years. 

Since it has not been implemented, I have to believe it’s because they make more money when people upgrade because their box is full.

Definitely not interested in their customers. I’ve my eye out for other, more customer responsive solutions, like iCloud, Google Drive, and the like.

Sorry Dropbox, you get a Thumbs Down for customer service.

100% need this feature. 

Hi Zagg,

You suggestion : "only sync files greater than XXX minutes old" is really interesting as well.

I hope some dropbox executives end up reading this post eventually, these features would be a great addition to dropbox.

The number of "file/folder in use" errors I get is absurd. I am at the point where I just turn of Dropbox entirely if I want to actually do any work.

Dropbox needs to allow file extensions to be excluded from sync, they need to allow certain files and subfolders to be excluded from sync. There needs to be an option to "only sync files greater than XXX minutes old" so my entire dropbox isn't filled with temp files that only ever existed for a few milliseconds.

Never try and do any 3D simulations with files in a dropbox folder, never render any video with files in Dropbox, never render 3d models with files in dropbox, never edit music with files in dropbox. All of these automated, time & computationally intensive processes with be stopped dead in their tracks by Dropbox.