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.

[djm2]

Yes, the top requested features are here! And dropbox gave us the middle finger again. Also why doesn't the UI update when you manually drag a file to a folder in the web app? And why is it so slow to upload a file and why are there so many errors when trying to upload multiple files. dropbox, you should focus on properly implementing the basic functionality that people want. It's a joke this hasn't been implemented yet and basic features don't function properly.

[iduran]

It looks like Dropbox is not implementing this feature any time soon, just like other similar applications, they don't have this feature either. However, after a long search, I found out that pCloud does have this feature and is very easy to just add the files that you want to be ignored by name (or pattern, e.g., node_modules) in the advanced sync option. I have been trying pCloud for a couple of days in my two machines and is working great so far. Besides, it has a free subscription that gives you 10GB of storage, more than enough for my developer projects that need this kind of feature. PS. Another application, Koofr, also offers this feature, however the sync process between two machines was not good at all, so I do not recommend this one.

[garronej]

pCloud seems great. If the realtime file versioning is good enough I am sold

[dman33]

I've seen others ask for a way to have global pattern matching to exclude folders from dropbox, such as node_modules, and other dependancy folder patterns that are better to be reinstalled on each system.

I think the easy solution for this would be for dropbox to include an option to follow .gitignore files if included in a folder. While I don't know the scope of the implementation, for advanced users this would provide an easy way to manage syncing without having to use selective folders. 

[Murat2334]

---

@dman33 wrote:

I've seen others ask for a way to have global pattern matching to exclude folders from dropbox, such as node_modules, and other dependancy folder patterns that are better to be reinstalled on each system.

I think the easy solution for this would be for dropbox to include an option to follow .gitignore files if included in a folder. While I don't know the scope of the implementation, for advanced users this would provide an easy way to manage syncing without having to use selective folders. 

---

[Ogilthorp]

There's currently 758 comments requesting this feature.  Can we get an actual response from DB instead of the "we'll pass it on" canned response?  As a developer with 100+ project folders, Dropbox completely pegs my CPU numerous times a day indexing all these node_modules folders.

There doesn't seem to be a valid tech reason why this can't happen - other smaller cloud services like pCloud already can do this.  What possible reason is this being ignored when it has to be your most requested feature?

[garronej]

pCloud is where it's at. Their selective sync feature is not as flexible as a .gitignore but it's way better thand what dropbox offer.
On top of that, for what I have experienced, pcloud has way better performances in therme of CPU usage and sync speed.

[Ogilthorp]

@garronej Thanks.  I was looking at their services yesterday and this feature alone is driving me to consider replacing Dropbox.  May I ask roughly how many files you have?  I have about 3 million files in DB, where maybe 80% of them are coming from node modules or (shudder) Wordpress spam.  Do you think pCloud could handle that many files?

This seems like a win/win for consumers and DB.  Consumers don't have to index 80% of their folder, while DB doesn't need to store 6 quadrillion node_modules files.  What's the downside?

[Kamik423]

It looks like we achieved something. Dropbox tweeted:

We hear you! We are experimenting with this possibility for the desktop app, so keep an eye on new updates of the app. Thanks for your input!

[jonathan r.38]

<insert dance meme>