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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
My fear of using something like pCloud is that it’s not as famous as dropbox or google drive and it might just disappear. Especially because it’s just a one time fee for 2 TB!
I once used a cloud storage service called Copy from barracuda. It went under and everyone who used it had to rush to get all their files and information off their servers.
So when I see a cloud storage service offering a lot of space for very little money I get nervous that it won’t be around very long.
It does look cool though especially with its public folder which you can use like a CDN. Dropbox got rid of that a few years ago… Messed up a few of my sites...
But Dropbox now has a really cool app and I like paper by Dropbox and the collaboration tools....
I’m deciding if it justifies the issue of node_modules and all those horrible files syncing.
Signing up for pCloud tomorrow. After 5 years of no progress and my MacBook trying to sync over 400K files for nearly 20 days I am done with Dropbox.
Today I had to rename a few files so I decided to do a test between Dropbox & Megasync.
Dropbox: 3 hours later, 289,647 files still left to upload
Megasync: Done in 18 minutes, because it's only syncing necessary files
I still have my Dropbox account because I'm holding out hope for this feature but it's hard to justify it much longer.
Note that a quickwin for this kind of feature would be adding an option in the "right-click" menu on a directory: enable/disable selective sync.
I am trying out pCloud and must say the ignore patterns don't work reliably for me. I want to ignore a specific subdirectory target/classes. That pattern doesn't work.
So far, I'm not ready to drop Dropbox for pCloud.
pCloud does have this feature, and it works on Linux and is cheaper... I couldn't believe at first, but now I became brave enough to try it out... I'm too lazy with these transitions... but it's worth it... thanks y'all (no thanks to dropbox)
I'm having similar experiences with pCloud working well. Simply putting in node_modules into the ignored expressions is saving me (and my CPU) from a ton of headaches.
I have to agree with djm2 - just tried pCloud with the regex pattern and it works perfectly. For testing I used a version of the .gitignore pattern for Python found on GitHub. Appended the pattern to the pCloud existing patterns, then in the pCloud folder created a Python virtual environment and started a small project. The patterns were honored perfectly by pCloud - the virtual environment folder together with many of the Python temporary files and folders were all ignored. It's perfect for my needs.
Now, for whichever dropbox admins or devs read this, I am due for my renewal in a little over two months. Sofar, unless you really match or exceed pCloud's offering, I will not be renewing my subscription.
- First impressions of pCloud are that it blows Dropbox away. Folders and files can be ignored by pattern. Syncing is actually fast. They let you encrypt your files instead of scanning them to share with their partners. And you can buy 2TB of lifetime storage for $350.
I have a folder called "Large", which I would like to have excluded from sync by default. I want a setting in Dropbox UI with which I can permanently exclude a folder.
That is, when I sync a new Dropbox installation, I should not have to go to sync settings and exclude it every time. If I decide later that I want it, I will have to go to sync settings and explicitly include it.
