Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

It is basically impossible to put any development projects in  Dropbox, since most IDEs change a lot of files (caches/indexes etc) as soon as you jost open themm. It can't be that hard to add an option to ignore files or folders with a pattern (like .cache, .git etc).

This is a MUST have feature, ADD IT NOW!

WE SHOULD BOYCOTT Drop box until they add this such simple thing!

I also need this feature to ignore the file I need update. Maybe it is fine to add a ignore list for me to prevent from updating the garbage to the dropbox.com. It doesn't make sense to me to update all data from the server and half of the data is garbage. The point is there is not a effectient  way to filter the files (like .obj, and some tempoary files from visual studio) which I don't want to upload. I feel it's not friendly to the havey user. I have pay the annual fee for severy years. I think dropbox is very good except lacking this feature. I need this feature so much OR I am looking for another choice for syncing the files.

Why is this not a thing yet?

I would love to go into the web interface, right click on a folder and check a box that is "Do not sync by default". That means when I install dropbox on a new computer, it does not start syncing that folder automatically, I have to go into the selective sync options and manually select it. Or, if I add a new folder to the root of my dropbox, I don't want it to automatically sync to all of my computers.

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Tom M. wrote:

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

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It's crazy that this issue with 26K Views 550 Comments 735 Votes has no definitive answer or solution after 2 years, 6 months, 9 days!! Should we assume that after 1,000 days at the top post - that this just isn't a priority for Dropbox? Even if the answer is "no" from Dropbox it would be nice to have them take a position. Otherwise, this just serves as a 2 1/2 year venting session which doesn't help anybody.

Let's try and think through why this isn't a feature on Dropbox.com. I assume it has to do with performance :white_check_mark:.

Probably the same reason the 2nd most popular post (calculating folder sizes) also isn't resolved. If you have ever tried to calculate folder sizes using Dropbox desktop (macos > list view > finder > show view options >[x] calculate all sizes) you know it takes processor time if the folders are large - and these are local computer files. I can't imagine what that would take on dropbox.com to count and calculate constantly.

Maybe adding patterns (like .gitignore) to dropbox.com would just slow it down too much. You might remember back before smart sync when it could take days to sync new users if you had 100's of GB's of files. Dropbox had the brilliant idea of 'hey lets just index the folder names and files instead" and now there isn't really a syncing lag issue (at least with me anyway). So why can't they just add a .gitignore to the selective sync indexing? 

I don't know but let's guess some reasons to why having a dropbox.com/share/ignore page isn't happening:

Possible Answers...?

1. It will slow down dropbox.com because it doesn't have to check which files are being uploaded it just has to check where they are uploaded. It only checks file extensions when you try to preview I prob.

2. That is a development feature (most personal/biz users don't sync node_modules) and so we will add it dropbox for linux. So on linux desktop instead of excluding a directory like this for every project:

dropbox exclude add ~/Dropbox/Project/node_modules

You can add a wildcard to the dropbox like:

dropbox exclude add node_modules/

3. It will break Extended Version History & Comments feature because how will users be able to restore files that were .ignored after then were added? How do we notify people that have commented on a now-.ignored file or folder?

4. Do it with the API using selective sync. Dropbox only syncs selected files so just programmatically uncheck any project with node_modules/ folder via the API. As soon as we get to that feature. 

I can't think of any other possible issues with implementing .gitignore.  I'm sure there must be some very good reasons for Dropbox not doing this, I just wish I knew what they were.

+1

 This is even more necessary with shared folders. Anytime any shared folder I have gets a new project (Java/Rails/Node) my computer is nearly unusable for a period of time with Dropbox indexing tens of thousands of files and short of going into the settings on each of my computers and unchecking selective sync for node_modules and related folders, there's nothing I can do. So frustrating.