Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

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.

Razvan Boxifier 

Here’s some thoughts.

The whole file/folder pattern based approach has merit, but in my opinion, I see some tradeoffs with this approach. 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.

You should be able to have a folder named “node_modules”, have it be located anywhere within your projects or anywhere in Dropbox, have it be for actual real node modules, or have it be just some random folder, that happens to be named node_modules, even if, as bad of an idea that it is, you should be able to do this. You should be able to selectively decide what gets synced and what stays local only.

My idea, essentially, is just an enhancement to the mechanisms that we’re already working with, ie. the ADS.

Here’s my idea, at least for Windows:

• Any file/folder, anywhere, can be set to be local-only via a right click action. We’re simply giving a GUI experience for running the ADS on the file/folder.
  
• Upon setting the ADS on a file/folder, we update the file/folders icon in File Explorer.

And that’s it.

It’s worth mentioning also, as it is right now via ADS, if a file/folder is local-only, if it’s deleted, then recreated, it does NOT automatically get set as local only. This makes sense. (Highlighting how this would be different with pattern based rules.)

Also, here’s a few things I recently stumbled upon, that might help or spark ideas from the community:

• From what I understand, I think this is an approach to setting your node_modules to a location outside of your project, ie. a global place:
  https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/commands/npm-prefix
• Here’s a client to see ADS’s (Update: I'm actually not sure what this streams thing is. Couldn't get it to work on Windows 11. Don't think it was what I thought it was.)
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/streams

And last, if you or anyone is interested in collaborating on the development of this, here’s a repo I just made on Github. Connect with me if you wanted to contribute.

https://github.com/justfront-end/DB-Local-Only

DelugeIA- don't hold your breath 🙂

This feature appears to have completely beaten the dropbox techies.

This is currently the TOP VOTED IDEA and it is now over EIGHT YEARS OLD.

The Dropbox Development Team must be familiar with git, .gitignore, robots.txt, .htaccess, Mod_Rewrite, and a hundred other things that use regex and pattern matching to accomplish this task. It surely cannot be as complicated as examining NTFS's ADS tags.

It seems that a minimum solution would to be able to add an option to Right Click > Dropbox > Ignore this File/Folder. But having to do that over and over seems almost as tedious as running a Powershell command.

And for us nerds, being able to add an entry to dropbox.ini or somewhere to ignore all XYZ named folders within an ABC path.

Ignore_Matching %Dropbox%\Projects\**\.vscode

Ignore_Matching %Dropbox%\Projects\**\.pio

Ignore_Matching %Dropbox%\Testing\**\nightly-builds\*.zip

Ignore_Matching %Dropbox%\National\Archives\Mar-a-Lago\Classified\*.pdf

Thank ya! 🙂