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.

[XionicFire]

Its been 3 years people, please add this feature, im not sure why its so complicated.

This along with renaming the dropbox folder to something else and my WORK PHONE to be able to upload WORK RELATED images into the BUSINESS FOLDER are sorely needed features.

In windows while having the dropbox named ( company name) sure sounded like a nice idea when you came up with it basically eats up a LOT of characters from the windows 255 character limit, and its unnacceptable, we have over 6 TB of data sored on the dropbox across 25 machines, while it wont matter to small users, its majorly cripling our coding operation.

To everyone here, I have managed 2 workarounds for these problems so far but every new version gets harder and harder to "fool" dropbox to make this workarounds work, and some of the workarounds dont work as well as wed like (the folder one you cannot create folders starting with . in windows, and cannot exclude hashtag files like *.tmp files or things like that) or are just plain ridiculous

To ignore a file:

Turn off the app that is locking the file, move the file somwehere else, create a folder with the EXACT same name as the file, go into selective sync exclude that folder, wait for dropbox to delete it, when dropbox finishes synching move the file back, it will be ignored from here on.

To rename dropbox to C:\Dropbox or D:\Dropbox.

Grab dropbox 2.4 old version offline installer, you can download it from the dropbox website in the archival area, you can only find this through google search, which is the last version that worked before they did the great dumbass idea to forcefully rename the dropbox folder.

Move your dropbox folder somewhere,

Go to Appdata / roaming / dropbox, delete everything there, (back it up first if you like)

Install 2.4, login to your dropbox account, as soon as you are logged in, hit pause, change your dropbox directory from C:\%userpath%\documents to C:\Dropbox, accept dropbox dialog saying its ok to move the files, once it finishes close dropbox, go to the C folder, create a folder called Dropbox (yourcompanyname) and remove all access permisions to the folder with windows security settings, this will ensure dropbox cant rename your dropbox folder again when you upgrade automatically, and yes if you ever give access to your account to this folder dropbox will automatically rename your dropbox folder without asking you, dropbox is CONSTANTLY trying to rename this folder non stop, and it pisses me off but not much you can do, as a backup i recomend you also add a folder just like this one to C:\%userpath%\documents just in case dropbox decides to move it back later. this way at least hes screwed and cant change your folder name to anything but dropbox because he PHISICALLY CANT, it gives you a little wiggle room for future versions changes or if someone at dropbox gets "creative" again with your file organization with zero regard to the implications of their desicions on their customers.

Once this is done,  turn dropbox on again, and hit resume synching, dropbox will update to the newest version and you will keep your dropbox folder where you want it (C:\Dropbox)

Weve had some problems with 3.14.7 that it logs you out whenever it upgrades from a very old version but we found a workaround upgrading manually to version 3.12.4 first using the offline installer, and then letting that one upgrade automatically to 3.14.7, and it works fine.

if you ever want to keep using your dropbox on the same folder on a new machine, repeat the create locked permissions folder steps, install dropbox with offline installer preferably not newer than 3.12.4 and copy the roaming dropbox folder from the old machine to the new machine after you install it, and after relinking your account again you should still keep the dropbox location where you want it.

If by now you are not going insane good for you, the point of all this was to show you just to how dumb and ridiculous this has gotten with the workarounds to get features that should have been included in the first place.

Dear Dropbox, PEOPLE THAT WORK AND USE DROPBOX FOR SERIOUS BUSINESS NEED TO RENAME WHERE THEIR FILES ARE FOR A MULTITUDE OF REASONS, NO, A SYMLINK WONT DO, PLEASE ADD THIS FEATURE, its been 3 years now, please, this is getting ridiculous.

I hope these workarounds helped someone.

[Brian C.62]

This is a very important feature that is missing.  For a developer, there are often projects that require "in-source" builds that are within the source code directory structure.  We need a way to automatically exclude these build folders so they don't waste time and bandwidth syncing loads of temporary build files.  The .gitignore approach works well and would be a great option.

As with others, I am exploring other options due to the inconvenience and wasted time associated with dealing with this issue.

[Toine K.]

This is getting really annoying...

As a webdeveloper I really need a .dropboxignore file next to my .gitignore & .jshintignore to exclude folders with thousands of files such as node_modules & bower_components to sync.

The Selective sync tree is so slow in browsing through folders and as soon as you forget to setup the exact same selective sync on one of your devices, you can start over again.

I'm not a Dropbox expert but it seems it can't be THAT difficult to implement this?

[Stefano Valicch1]

As a "zero day user" of Dropbox (I felt in love immediately the very first time I used it, and immediately bought a plan, then "bugged" my boss 'till my entire company bought it) I can see as Dropbox is "getting lazy" on new features.

I can understand devs are focused on Paper and such, but some "basic" features, even if targeted to a niche as developers, would really justify the fact that Dropbox is actually the most expensive Cloud Sync solution compared to other competitors.

Please make me feel "content" as before. I really love your reliability and speed, but world is moving on.

Best regards,

an happy customer but unhappy developer.

[Johnny W.2]

The guys at DropBox did a great job making sure that MailBox stayed ahead of the game by constantly innov-- Oh wait, no they didn't. I guess DropBox will be the next casualty in their masterplan.

Nice going, guys. Fuelling hatred and frustration among your users is a great strategy! 

I will do my best to spread my sense of dissatisfaction far and wide around the internet. You've had more than enough time to make some promises to your maligned user base.

[matt s.64]

+1000000000

[Morten Aune L.]

Yes please. I sometimes use DropBox for some lesser programming projects. It's really annoying when all binaries and temporary files are also synced when they most definitely don't need to.

[Bruno W.]

+1

[sims k.]

+1

[Alexey S.3]

Please add this feature!!! Especially marker file!