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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
+1
Make .dbignore work just like .gitignore and search up the hierarchy to the DB root. Not trivial as some have suggested because it must be supported by each client, but it's common behavior for similar tools. Please!
Hi, I've build something for this problem for Linux. It makes use of the Dropbox CLI, thus unfortunately does not work on operation systems not supported by CLI.
It will keep watching your files and if you create a new directory that should be ignored it automatically added to selective sync.
https://github.com/ritchie46/dbignore
try it, pcloud, you may like it :-)
they have over 3 million,
yes dropbox has lots more, but most are free users anyway,
but anyhow, i use both dropbox and pcloud, and i like pcloud way more,
just the fact that you can sync, backup, ANY, ANY folder and as many on your computer.
GENIUS !!!! and moving folder locations is not a nightmare as it is in dropbox, i mean you can't even redirect a folder without db, resyncing, etc..... enough complaining :-)
Musiclee I have never heard of pCloud. I meant to say "major 'provider" such as those mentioned, but good to know it's a feature in the wild - strange pCloud doesn't even mention it as a feature considering the popularity of the request. I wonder if adding a new ignore pattern (i.e. *.doc) would cause it to reindex and resync the entire pCloud folder - eating up both processing power and bandwidth like Dropbox pre SmartSync used to.
"In the Sync tab of your pCloud Drive you have a subtab called Advanced Settings. It contains a field where the patterns to be ignored are listed. You can add or remove patterns from this list. Those so called patterns may be file and folder names, file extensions, etc. Those will be ignored when performing synchronization between your computer and the pCloud platform. To save the changes you make to those patterns, click the Apply button at the bottom.
Not true , pCloud has had this "ignore" file or folder feature from over 3 years now
and pCloud let's you sync any and as many folders on your computer as you'd like, not just your 1 Dropbox folder
i guess all others are playing catch up...
no, I don't work for pCloud
it's just so **bleep** intuitive and feature rich
joeyespo Great suggestions, I like thinking of it as an advanced selective sync feature. I looked around a bit you are totally right regarding this being a hot topic - not only here but also on the Google Drive forum and the Microsoft One Drive forum.
I wonder why it's not being implemented by any provider yet.@wwwiz
> but I don't see how that would be a useful feature for the general Dropbox user base.
You can think of this as a more flexible (advanced) "selective sync" feature, which is demonstratably beneficial to users today. This feature solves the annoyance of de-selecting folders manually over and over and over.
> that would cause many support tickets from users looking for folders or files that forgot they ignored globally
This can easily be mitigated by showing an icon on ignored folders. Selective sync already does this. The icon could even resemble the the .dropboxignore's icon to remind people that it was "de-selected" that way.
Also, generally only people who know about this feature will add it. They'll likely be savvy enough to recognize the folder icon or think to look at selective sync settings.
> Not sure there is enough benefit for that type of change.
The fact that this is the top issue on this forum and has 53 pages of comments is a strong signal that this is indeed beneficial for a significant number of people.
Michael- I said I don't know how .dropboxignore would be a useful feature for the general userbase, not that the general user base would be creating .dropboxignore files (instead of menu > hide).
A reason that a general user might ignore all photoshop files is because they can take up a lot of space, and are only useful to sync if you know photoshop. With SmartSync this is less of a concern now.@wwwiz Why would the "general Dropbox user base" create an ignore file for all .psd files?
