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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
Rasso
New member | Level 2

Any update on this matter? Also, +1 🙂

Ryan S.20
New member | Level 1

I would love this! I really want to be able to ignore all the node_modules directories in all the node projects I sync with dropbox, sync's so many files that I really don't need.

Dushyant J.
New member | Level 1

+1

I almost thought it was already there... now it looks like a gaping hole in the sync capability.

Ettore P.1
New member | Level 2

+1 on .dropboxignore

David P.131
New member | Level 2

+1, such an obvious feature, dropbox has crashed on me so many time because of node_modules. Let me ignore them with a simple .dropboxignore file or something along those lines

James W.78
Explorer | Level 3

Oh man i would love a .dropboxignore file

pete r.6
New member | Level 1

+1 this should've been added a long time ago! c'mon guys, please add it!

ComicBookGuy
New member | Level 2

Two years and nothing from Dropbox on this?

Node development is PAINFUL - 2 hours for my work machine to sync last night's work from my home machine. TWO HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Daniel T.40
New member | Level 2

Fergal  - I actually have a different folder for "development" that is not syned with dropbox and I manually copy it using a disk-on-key 😕 

boo you dropbox!

Reinout R.
New member | Level 1

This is a necessity for power users. As mentioned by others, some of use have folders with 10000 small files that are updates very frequently but that we don't want to sync. For instance node_modules when working on Node.js projects. Another example is that some of my projects have an sqlite database in the folder that I don't want to sync every 5 seconds because a byte changed somewhere.

It doesn't need to be a complex thing, just for users that know what they are doing.I don't even need a fancy way of defining rules, an easy solution is if  a".dropboxignore" file is detected in a folder the folder and it's children could be ignored by dropbox. 

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