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.

[Pengkui L.]

+100086

[Erwin M.]

Dave, I would gladly pay $20 for a simple, reliable and well-maintained third party tool to achieve this. Though an open-source solution would be appreciated to be able to audit the code.
I am a bit worried with more complex ad hoc implementations like Boxifier which are fantastic in theory, but that constantly have to catch up with the non documented behavior of the official client (and make you run the risk of losing files every now and then!). It is a shame the Windows official client is not open-source nor has a suitable API nor has a CLI as in Linux.

For now I am trying to make use of the excellent (and free) ODrive, which is basically an alternate Dropbox client. It allows a much better selective sync process (that DOES NOT HANG for hours contrarily to the official Dropbox client), but no gitignore-like functionality (for now).

I understand you are able to make Dropbox ignore existing files on the disk by not being aware of them, however are you 100% sure the client would not be able to circumvent that through the use of other Win32 APIs? How do you prevent Dropbox from syncing an existing remote tmp file onto the local computer, when it is marked as to be ignored?

[M_1]

another +1

With all the posts here about lack of pricing tiers, shared folder quotas, and low margins, it makes no sense for Dropbox to offer such little control over syncing.   I sync A LOT of junk like temp files because it's buried in larger local folders with important content and there is no practical means to filter it out.   I looked at using a 3rd party clients which can connect to Dropbox and exclude by type or name, but they lose block level syncing capability.

[Mike C.75]

+1

[Ivor K.]

Can we please get some feedback from Dropbox staff on this feature?

[Josh E.5]

Well this issue has apparently been around for a while and is completely being ignored. Looooooooooooks like I'll be moving to other dropboxx program

[Taavi E.]

Many linux text editors, IDEs and many more programs create temporary and "junk" files that should not be synced. Regex excluding would be really appreciated.

[Halil Ş.]

Even though this is already available on Linux, Dropbox successfully ignoring the needs of the users on other platforms. I keep some visual studio projects and some tex documentation in dropbox folder and when you compile either of them, they create lots of intermediatery dfg vfiles  

[Jad B.]

+1

[Matteo B.]

+1. Please listen to your customers!