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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
borkdude
Helpful | Level 5

Also pCloud doesn't support ignoring folders based on a certain parent directory. E.g. I want to exclude all classes folders if the occur in the directory target. So the pattern would be: target/classes. In pCloud this doesn't work.

pCloud's customer service still doesn't include your original message in their replies. Also they do not have a public forum like this. They consider it "bad practice". I don't agree. For now I'll stick with Dropbox and still hope they will include this feature.

 

Screenshot 2019-08-04 14.56.58.png

nickyhajal
Helpful | Level 6

Have you taken a look at mega.nz? It seems to cover all my required bases in terms of ignoring files.

I've been slowly shifting off of DB and onto Mega

sachinbee
Explorer | Level 3

I moved to pCloud last month after reading through some of the reviews on this thread. And I couldn't be more satisfied. Besides being super-fast, pCloud effectively lets me ignore my node_modules folder.  As a result, everything syncs well, and the pCloud desktop app is way lighter than Dropbox, which burns into memory.

And pCloud lets me backup my Dropbox content as well, so I don't have to waste time in moving my data manually. All in all, a complete win, as far as my problem was concerned.

r8928
New member | Level 2

+1

miromannino
Explorer | Level 4

Well my node_modules folders can't be syncronized with Dropbox because it's just too much for Dropbox. 

The solution would be a simple file .dbignore that tells Dropbox to ignore folders/files like that.

I guess my only solution is to do not use Dropbox, since with such projects my entire computer (and internet connection) becomes slow with dropbox syncing for hours.

Meaning, I don't really have any more reason to pay for Dropbox. I can't use it for professional reasons. Bye Dropbox.

karian
Explorer | Level 3

I have Dropbox since years and it's been years that I expect it to deliver this feature.

We need more controls on what's syncing because it's no good for computers and for mother earth to send over datas for nothing...

I know it's challenging but you can do it !

wasting data-centers spacewasting data-centers space

Gato-Gato
Explorer | Level 4

Not sure if suggested before but I resolved the issue on Mac with manual symlinks.

  1. Create a folder named "Symlinked" in ~/Library/Caches
  2. Recreate empty ignored folders in a separate directory for each project (like "proj_A/packages", "proj_B/node_modules")
  3. Remove ignored folders from Dropbox if they were created previously
  4. Create symlinks for each ignored folder:
ln -s  /Users/MyUser/Library/Caches/Symlinked/ProjectA/packages /Users/MyUser/Dropbox/ProjectA/packages

Probably it could be automated but I don't have much stuff, so I just copy-pasted it a couple of dozens of times into the Terminal, changing names of the directories.

Ogilthorp
Explorer | Level 4

We tried something similar to the approach above but it just got too cumbersome with all the projects rolling through here.

This feature request is marked in their "not for right now" category with 1,014 votes with second place coming in at 171.  They've shown they're not really interested in what their users want.  They're not focusing on what made them popular to begin with - their sync engine.  Much of their attention appears to be on the docs/Paper/Showcse products which to this day I've never seen anyone use.

The only option at this point is to ditch Dropbox.  We will be after our plan runs out.

sgttwld
Helpful | Level 6

@miromannino To ignore a node_modules folder, for me the old trick still works where you make a backup of the folder you want dropbox to ignore, disable syncing with that folder in the dropbox settings (which REMOVES the folder from your machine), and then just copy it back to the original destination from the backup. Any further changes to that folder should be ignored by dropbox now.

miromannino
Explorer | Level 4

Yes that is exactly what I do now... I move the node_modules folder somewhere else and I create an empty node_modules folder, then I unsync that and copy the node_modules back where it was. I mean it works, but still it's not convinient.

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1,362 votes received Status: Investigating