Your workflow is unique 👨💻 - tell us how you use Dropbox here.
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
Idea Status Update
We're launching a closed beta for Ignore Files feature, and we’d love your help testing it out.
1,036 Comments
If you're talking about using the workaround I mentioned, no, you don't leave that folder in place. As I noted, you just temporarily create such a folder and then exclude it. Dropbox automatically deletes that folder.
It's a PITA, though, so Dropbox really needs to include this capability.
Wouldn't replacing the files with a folder (titled the same) change how other members of the shared folder view the folder? They would then too just see empty folders instead of the actual file, no?
+1
@Demetrios: your answer if fine except for one tiny detail: some programs create lock or temporary files in the same location as an opened file outside the patterns you already check. When Dropbox swoops in to sync problems can sometimes arise. I have seen lock files proliferate, probably because of timing problems between the offending program and Dropbox - but it only happens sometimes for some programs. Therefore it would be nice to be able to explicitly exclude patterns that are known troublemakers, based on personal experience. Nice To Have, not Need To Have. :-)
+1
+1 this would be extremely useful
+1
Another example is editing Word documents. Word creates a temporary file ~$filename.doc which is sync'd and stays there after closing the document.
Edit: It seems that Word temporary files are now excluded in the newer Dropbox versions.
+1 for this feature. Would be nice if we can exclude files by using filters.
I have some Word documents on my dropbox. When I edit the file, Word creates a temporary file which is also sync'd and not deleted when I close the file again.
