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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
alex82
New member | Level 2

I support this feature request - this would allow to ignore caches, etc...

 

Although I do not share the seemingly common view that "this should be trivial to implement" blablabla.... I will leave the technical evaluation to the competent teams of kickass dropbox engineers who have built a strong and capable product over the years.

 

Hope to see this someday!

alex82
New member | Level 2

Ha! This is a great workaround which I tested and works for the time being (aalthough it requires manually selecting the folder to unsync etc...) . http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/exclude-folders-from-syncing

hnkn
Explorer | Level 3

So **bleep** simple - .dropignore

 

Google Drive doesn't, OneDrive doesn't, and neither does Dropbox. That's not stupid, that's intentional. Make a free unlimited sync service supported by minimal adds, and take my money! Home folder sync, include and exclude patterns. Simple

lsmgeb89
New member | Level 2

Three years passed. Nothing changed.

Vít P.
Explorer | Level 3

This is so sad...

Kleajmp F.
Helpful | Level 7

+1

 

Please implement it so the user can define file types to exclude. Not everyone uses popular software like msword. Your professional (paying) users like designers might use Adobe InDesign of programmers Eclipse and a lot of more. Just give us more control. I choose for Dropbox cause it is more advanced than the others on the marked, please keep it like that.

skoczen
New member | Level 2

I've been following this thread for years as well - today was the final straw.

 

Hello, sync.com.  Oh, you have an ignore file that Just Works, you're cheaper than dropbox, and you're not subject to the Patriot Act?

 

I'm clearly late to the game.  Bye, Dropbox.

TheYurry
New member | Level 2

The way I see it this is a feature that doen't really make much bussines sense to Dropbox, they'd prefer us to use DB as inefficiently as posible, so we are forced to use premium.

just use bitbucket for coding and google cloud storage for backups. I'm just about done with DB.

 

otherwise +1

 

J.

alex-vasenin
New member | Level 2
+1
hakimelek
New member | Level 2

It would actually be nice to have dropbox to ignore synchronizing specific folders with a given name or pattern!

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