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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
Citrix has this program called, Sharefile, and I recall being able to create an ignore list.
"There is a configuration file called "SyncEngine.exe.config" that can be edited to exclude files by name and/or extension. For example, excluding all .exe files from syncing."
Maybe....Dropbox can't touch the tech because there is a patent out for this type of exclusion.
...but then I see that other services like iDrive has it as well.
'To access pattern based exclusion, right click the 'IDrive Tray' (which is running in your system tray) and select 'Preferences' menu item. In the 'Preferences' screen, select the 'Exclude' tab. Under the 'Exclude' tab, insert required patterns that you wish to exclude in the 'Files / folders with partial names' list view. For Instance: To exclude all ".log" files from backup, insert ".log" in the 'Files / folders with partial names' list view (right click on list view and select 'Insert partial file name' option).'
If you use a service like odrive, you could use it to sync with google drive, amazon cloud, dropbox, onedrive, box, s3, and it ignores a bunch of system files that we would like to ignore.
odrive will ignore certain files. They are typically system files and temporary files that are not intended to be synced to the cloud. These types of files will show on your desktop client but will not sync to the cloud. They will not have any badging. There is no list that is generated with them on it. They are literally ignored. This is the current "ignore" list. File names .odrive .oxygenreserved .oxygenmeta .lock .localized icon/r icon\r .dropbox .ds_store thumbs.db thumbs.db:encryptable desktop.ini .git .gitignore com1 com2 com3 com com com com com8 com9 lpt1 lpt2 lpt3 lpt4 lpt5 lpt6 lpt7 lpt8 lpt9 con nul prn $mft $mftmirr $logfile $volume $attrdef $bitmap $boot $badclus $secure $upcase $extend $quota $objld $reparse System Volume Information Extensions .tmp .download .crdownload .lrprev .dwl .dwl2 .m/~ Prefixes ._ ~ .~ .lock .dwl .dwl2 .m/~
I remember trying odrive for another reason, to treat your cloud storage like a network drive, but I didn't stick with it for some reason. After dealling with a bunch of node-modules I think I am going to give it a whirl again.
The same discussion is in the Google Drive forums. Google gives zero f**k about it. How about Dropbox?
Example: InDesign creates tempfiles which isnt necessary to sync.
- Create a .dbignore file similar to .gitignore.
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 is automatically added to selective sync.
https://github.com/ritchie46/dbignore For God's sake, even a simple no-wildcard full-path based system would provide some relief to most users.
Even if I had to type all the "/project/node_modules" paths it would be a lot better than the current "we don't care" approach. It's a pretty simple implementation, com'on, Dropbox!
Please, add .dbignore file...
yes, please!
with .dropboxignore or other easy way
It's amazing that Guido works at DropBox, but you can't tell it to automatically ignore all __pycache__ and *.pyc files.
Has there been ANY movement at all from DropBox? Or are they still treating us all like dirt?
