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.

[Tom V.6]

This would be great for working on git repos located inside Dropbox folders. At the office, I typically set up individuals' Documents folder to be located inside Dropbox to serve as a sort of backup. And this is great most of the time, but it's very annoying for anyone with git repos in that folder. There are so many files in .git, and my history of changed files is hopelessly cluttered by them.

I just got an email from Dropbox telling me that I recently deleted a large number of files, and I can review them for restoration if necessary. That large number of files--over 2100 of them--was a single small repo with some node_modules.

In the same way I can use .gitignore to exclude temporary or unnecessary files from the repo, I'd love a .dropboxignore to ignore git!

[Johnny W.2]

Don't forget to add your voice (and UPVOTE THE THREAD) here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201289669-Ignore-folder-without-selective-sync...

That's the central discussion for this feature being added 🙂

[Tom V.6]

+1

[Johnny W.2]

Just a reminder to everyone that you should UPVOTE the actual question, too!

[Fahrul R.]

+99999999

[jonas f.]

@Johnny W. is right! Don't forget to upvote the question 🙂

[Mathias V.]

+1

[Vít P.]

+1 for .dropboxignore

[aditya R.1]

+1

[Frank E.]

It looks like Dropbox already implemented some ignore functionality 🙂

At least this forum post seems to be successfully ignored...