Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

[Tom_M]

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

[Emma]

Hi folks, 

Thanks for your feedback on this.
While ignored files delivers for some of the use cases here, I appreciate it does not for all. 
We'll be taking another review of this thread to isolate use cases for a .dropboxignore file feature in particular.

I've updated the status and we'll take this to the product team.
As a side note, it would be helpful for us if you could outline the gap between what ignored files offers, and what a .dropboxignore file feature would add to your workflows.

Thank you.

[Leonardo R.1]

+1

[Sam B.27]

Has Dropbox even acknowledged this request?  They should minimally say they will or won't work on it.  This is the number 1 requested item on their list.

[Leonardo R.1]

From what I've read on the thread: no, they have not acknowledged the request. Maybe on a separate source, but I do not know about it.

[Ed]

Yes, we've been reading this thread (see my latest comment here) as well as others.

[Sam B.27]

#1 request here and I think a response of "We are adding it to our dev list"  or  "we won't be doing this" would be appropriate.  I won't ask for a schedule, but I'd appreciate an update to the consideration of the request so some of us can make a decision.

[matt s.64]

I agree with Sam B.. 

Ed, can you please give us more information about the status of this instead of referencing a 2 months old comment which doesn't tell us anything really?

[nicolas b.13]

@Ed

I think you can understand that "noted" and "passed to our dev team" is a bit light for an answer.

This thread has been running for 1 year, before your answer.

For me this problem has been the only reason why I didn't renew my membership, it was to slow on a daily basis. I couldn't stand waiting and being slowed down by for you app.

Plus, past experience with Mailbox, tend to let people think that you are dropping (ahah) Dropbox...

[Nick M.15]

@Ed to clarify the above - I've read multiple threads on this issue - it's hard to believe your dev team could even use your own product without some sort of pattern matching to ignore files. I stopped using your product a couple years ago because of this issue - and was trying it again recently - i'm on this thread to find if it was fixed... sad to see it hasn't budged.

[TAM+CZ A.]

Just for the fun of it, here's the threads I'm aware of that all basically are asking for the same thing.  They have all gotten the same "this has been passed on to our dev team" response or equivalent.

[removed old links]

[Sam B.27]

462 total votes.