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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
Musiclee
Helpful | Level 6

Not true , pCloud has had this "ignore" file or folder feature from over 3 years now

 

and pCloud let's you sync any and as many folders on your computer as you'd like, not just your 1 Dropbox folder

 

i guess all others are playing catch up...

 

no, I don't work for pCloud 

it's just so **bleep** intuitive and feature rich

Musiclee
Helpful | Level 6

"In the Sync tab of your pCloud Drive you have a subtab called Advanced Settings. It contains a field where the patterns to be ignored are listed. You can add or remove patterns from this list. Those so called patterns may be file and folder names, file extensions, etc. Those will be ignored when performing synchronization between your computer and the pCloud platform. To save the changes you make to those patterns, click the Apply button at the bottom.

wwwiz
Helpful | Level 6

@Musiclee I have never heard of pCloud. I meant to say "major 'provider" such as those mentioned, but good to know it's a feature in the wild - strange pCloud doesn't even mention it as a feature considering the popularity of the request. I wonder if adding a new ignore pattern (i.e. *.doc) would cause it to reindex and resync the entire pCloud folder - eating up both processing power and bandwidth like Dropbox pre SmartSync used to.

soniclee
Explorer | Level 3

try it,  pcloud,   you may like it   🙂

they have over 3 million,   

yes dropbox has lots more,  but most are free users anyway,   

but anyhow,   i use both dropbox and pcloud,   and i like pcloud way more, 

just the fact that you can sync,  backup,  ANY, ANY folder and as many on your computer.

GENIUS !!!!     and moving folder locations is not a nightmare as it is in dropbox,   i mean you can't even redirect a folder without db, resyncing,     etc.....   enough complaining   🙂

ritchie46
New member | Level 2

Hi, I've build something for this problem for Linux. It makes use of the Dropbox CLI, thus unfortunately does not work on operation systems not supported by CLI.

 

It will keep watching your files and if you create a new directory that should be ignored it automatically added to selective sync.

 

https://github.com/ritchie46/dbignore

 

David H.87
Explorer | Level 4

+1

 

Make .dbignore work just like .gitignore and search up the hierarchy to the DB root. Not trivial as some have suggested because it must be supported by each client, but it's common behavior for similar tools. Please!

TAM+CZ A.
Explorer | Level 3

So I think we have our answer, the following by Rich copied from here.

 

Rich
Super User

carmacooper wrote:

Does anyone know if this has been resolved?


The functionality has not changed. If I had to guess, it likely won't change as the feature is working as intended.

Johnny W.2
Helpful | Level 7

Has there been ANY movement at all from DropBox? Or are they still treating us all like dirt?

mplanchard
Explorer | Level 3

It's amazing that Guido works at DropBox, but you can't tell it to automatically ignore all __pycache__ and *.pyc files. 

sba
New member | Level 2

yes, please!

with .dropboxignore or other easy way

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