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.

[Y. Lew]

+1....

[Александр В.1]

+1

[Gavin G.4]

+1!

.dropboxignore my node_modules 🙂

[Melle B.]

On Linux Dropbox has a client (`dropbox`) and a deamon (`dropboxd`).

The client has the `exclude` command, which you can use to exclude directories. E.g. to exclude node_modules from Dropbox you can enter `dropbox exclude add ./node_modules`

`dropbox help exclude` will print the help information:


    dropbox exclude [list]
    dropbox exclude add [DIRECTORY] [DIRECTORY] ...
    dropbox exclude remove [DIRECTORY] [DIRECTORY] ...
    
    "list" prints a list of directories currently excluded from syncing.
    "add" adds one or more directories to the exclusion list, then resynchronizes Dropbox.
    "remove" removes one or more directories from the exclusion list, then resynchronizes Dropbox.
    With no arguments, executes "list".
    Any specified path must be within Dropbox.

[Karl Laurentius]

+1

[Mariano C.]

+1 and still no answer.

[James M.16]

One way to avoid this is just to make symbolic links, but that can be a very tedious process depending on file structure.

[Tom P.6]

Implement this feature please 😄

[Tom P.6]

Looks like another cloud storage provider called pcloud has this feature and you get 10gb of free space on sign up (up to 20 for referring freinds).

About to give it a try now.

https://www.pcloud.com/help/drive-help-center/what-does-ignore-the-following-patterns-mean

[Zack C.]

+1