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Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Tom_M
Helpful | Level 6

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

Latest Update
Emma
Community Manager

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.

Status changed to: Investigating
973 Comments
Christian E.9
Collaborator | Level 9

+1

bilal
New member | Level 2

I'm constanly in need of changing my development environment, and I love using dropbox because other than using github its more up to date and it also contains my IDE preferences, sometimes I get bored from desktop and take my laptop and continue from there thanks to Dropbox, but recently I built a new machine and installed a fresh dropbox, selected only development folder with few projects to sync, but because of node_modules folders its around 200.000 files and it will take forever to download, its not about the size of the files, its the amount that makes it harder to sync, and I dont even need those files.. files I need are maximum 100.

There are also other scenarios like the need of to not sync ._* files generated by osx etc.

 

It might not be profitable for you to make developers your users, and making this update may interest developers more, but we are your user anyway, so with optimizations like these you can save from a lot of http requests and storage space, we generally use little space but with tons of little files.

Thanks

CupOfTea696
New member | Level 2

+1

Tim M.10
New member | Level 2

+1

FOLOF
New member | Level 2

+1

wwwiz
Helpful | Level 6

I'm all for the benefits .gitignore if you are using Git (which ignores folders by default) but I don't see how that would be a useful feature for the general Dropbox user base. 

 

If there was an invisible .dropboxignore folder that ignored all photoshop files (*.psd) in all folders that would cause many support tickets from users looking for folders or files that forgot they ignored globally.

 

Maybe if it was an online-only setting that you could hide on a per folder/file basis using the contextual menu (menu > hide). But that would probably include adding a 'show hidden files' option online (next to show deleted) as well as a Account/Selective Sync (show hidden files) desktop option. 

Not sure there is enough benefit for that type of change.

Michael-
Explorer | Level 3

@wwwiz Why would the "general Dropbox user base" create an ignore file for all .psd files?

wwwiz
Helpful | Level 6

@Michael- I said I don't know how .dropboxignore  would be a useful feature for the general userbase, not that the general user base would be creating .dropboxignore files (instead of menu > hide).

A reason that a general user might ignore all photoshop files is because they can take up a lot of space, and are only useful to sync if you know photoshop. With SmartSync this is less of a concern now. 

joeyespo
Explorer | Level 4

@wwwiz

 

but I don't see how that would be a useful feature for the general Dropbox user base.

 

You can think of this as a more flexible (advanced) "selective sync" feature, which is demonstratably beneficial to users today. This feature solves the annoyance of de-selecting folders manually over and over and over.

 

that would cause many support tickets from users looking for folders or files that forgot they ignored globally

 

This can easily be mitigated by showing an icon on ignored folders. Selective sync already does this. The icon could even resemble the the .dropboxignore's icon to remind people that it was "de-selected" that way.

 

Also, generally only people who know about this feature will add it. They'll likely be savvy enough to recognize the folder icon or think to look at selective sync settings.

 

Not sure there is enough benefit for that type of change.

 

The fact that this is the top issue on this forum and has 53 pages of comments is a strong signal that this is indeed beneficial for a significant number of people.

 

wwwiz
Helpful | Level 6

@joeyespo Great suggestions, I like thinking of it as an advanced selective sync feature. I looked around a bit you are totally right regarding this being a hot topic - not only here but also on the Google Drive forum and the Microsoft One Drive forum

I wonder why it's not being implemented by any provider yet.

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