Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Justin from Just Front-end wrote:

Are you by chance, able to explain exactly what this command is doing?

"Set-Content -Path C:\Users\yourName\Dropbox\someFolder -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1"

 

I read the Microsoft docs on "Set-Content", but I'm perplexed exactly on how this stops Dropbox from syncing?

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Sure, what that command does is to mark a folder on the local filesystem so that it is ignored by the Dropbox sync engine. It does that by attaching an "alternate data stream" (which is a feature of the NTFS filesystem) to the folder that you want to exclude from syncing. You can think of it like putting a sticky note on a folder.

When scanning the Dropbox folder looking for changes to sync, Dropbox checks for the presence of such alternate data stream named  "com.dropbox.ignore" attached to a folder. What that PowerShell command that you quoted does is to attach an alternate data stream named "com.dropbox.ignore", with the contents of the stream being "1". In computer code, 1 is the value for "true" or "enabled".

This means that the decision to ignore the folder is only stored locally (on that computer), so it only applies to the computer where you run the command, not other computers where you are also using Dropbox with the same account.

Justin from Just Front-end wrote:

Is there a list of files/folders somewhere on one's computer which Dropbox uses as a reference for
what files/folders not to sync?

Or is such a reference stored in the cloud?

To answer your question, there isn't one place or list on one's computer for Dropbox to use as a reference. It builds that list on-the-fly by scanning the Dropbox folder and seeing which folders have the ".com.dropbox.ignore" sticky note attached to them.

Hope that helps!

Razvan