Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

For those of you liking pCloud. I found that for the ignore to work you need to have the folder being used outside of pCloud and then you use the sync to bring it in. 
So your really not working directly off of your cloud drive. 
you end up having to download the folder off of pCloud to work on it. 

After recommendations from other people in this thread, I've finally decided to try pCloud.

It's an amazing service. It's all I wanted in a virtual drive service, without any of the garbage.

It automatically creates a virtual drive that contains files and folders (without taking local space). Uploads and downloads are super fast, without any of the extremely slow starting/sync times DropBox has given me (even though I have 600mb there, more than DropBox). This has all worked much better than DropBox's Smart Sync.

The kicker is: it comes with global file ignoring by pattern by default. Something that DropBox can't find the time or the will to implement, even after years of requests, is a default feature...

And if anything, the lack of certain features like document-ending (i.e. DropBox Paper) mean to me that pCloud is focused in providing the best virtual file experience for users than actually need it, rather than trying to expand the business horizontally and letting the virtual file service features mummify over time.

I've started migrating all my stuff to pCloud. So far I don't see any downside, and I'm happy to support a small company trying to do one thing right. It'll take a few months for me to do the transition (and I still have some time left on my DropBox paid tier anyway) but I'm very happy so far.

So, you know, just ignore this thread's requests as you have, DropBox. On a long enough timeline, it won't matter.

carlbrusse I always did as explained in the solution in that link you wrote and it seems there are no issues.

For example I have a project MyProject, where inside there are several folders and files. Among these there is the infamous node_modules folder.

I copy on my desktop the node_modules and I let Dropbox sync that the node_modules folder is gone.

I create a folder inside MyProject called node_modules and I let Dropbox to sync again.

Then I do selective sync removing node_modules from synced files

Now I copy back the node_modules in my desktop where it was before inside MyProject folder.

This process is very annoying but at least seems to work still. And I don't usually create new projects every other day so for me is still reasonable.

Can you confirm that works? Which OS?

PS. When I install packages (change the node_modules folder files) Dropbox still uses 100% CPU for a while though since is calculating differences. Dropbox, this should be optimised, it's very very annoying.

There are so many threads on this, and the recent changes which have removed the workaround, but apparently it is all 'solved'...

e.g.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/How-to-manually-stop-sync-of-a-folder-but-still-retain-local/td-p/360922

I'm aghast that this is not possible. More than that, for years I have used the selective sync hack to reproduce this behavior but a few days ago I started having Selective Sync Conflicts

well, I can tell you it is more than 8 years, since it has been first requsted to get an option to exclude files/folders (this was in the old forum before this one, might have been even earlier, it was for sure before the votebox interlude)
anyway, at that time Arash made a comment they have it internally, in it will soon be public, well there we are many many many years later, and still nothing
(luckly for dropbox the forum is gone, so we cannot show them for how long this is outstanding)

Me too.

When will this issue be fixed?

When I'm working with Node-related apps, indexing does not complete due to node_modules.
Dropbox is no longer useful..

nickyhajal Well said! It is super strange how they behave about this issue, because they don't even hide it behind a paywall as a premium feature or anything. You can pay as much as you want, you are still stuck with hacky solutions for excluding folders that are either not working reliably or unpractical for many users.

FionaIt is honestly as if you are taunting us by finally replying to this thread but addressing a completely tangential issue.

Obviously you guys are reading and aware of the demand for this issue so why can't you give us a better idea of 1) If this will ever be implemented and 2) If not, why not?

I have 2TB of space but Dropbox can't even index my 140GB properly because the quantity of small files just makes the indexing go crazy. It's totally unacceptable.

Hello all! Thanks for adding your feedback here. Please take a look at this article, explaining how conflicted copies are created and how to avoid them: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/conflicted-copy

I also encourage you to contact our support directly, we can help you more effectively, looking at accounts details, file events etc. We are unable to investigate in that depth via Community for privacy reasons. 

Thank you. Have a nice weekend!