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.

[Сергей В.3]

Please, add .dbignore file...

[dnunes]

For God's sake, even a simple no-wildcard full-path based system would provide some relief to most users.

Even if I had to type all the "/project/node_modules" paths it would be a lot better than the current "we don't care" approach. It's a pretty simple implementation, com'on, Dropbox!

[ritchie46]

Create a .dbignore file similar to .gitignore.

It makes use of the Dropbox CLI, thus unfortunately does not work on operation systems not supported by CLI.



It will keep watching your files and if you create a new directory that should be ignored it is automatically added to selective sync.



https://github.com/ritchie46/dbignore

[Docenten]

Example: InDesign creates tempfiles which isnt necessary to sync. 

[Docenten]

The same discussion is in the Google Drive forums. Google gives zero f**k about it. How about Dropbox?

[Sherwino]

Citrix has this program called, Sharefile, and I recall being able to create an ignore list.

"There is a configuration file called "SyncEngine.exe.config" that can be edited to exclude files by name and/or extension. For example, excluding all .exe files from syncing."

Maybe....Dropbox can't touch the tech because there is a patent out for this type of exclusion.

...but then I see that other services like iDrive has it as well.

'To access pattern based exclusion, right click the 'IDrive Tray' (which is running in your system tray) and select 'Preferences' menu item. In the 'Preferences' screen, select the 'Exclude' tab. Under the 'Exclude' tab, insert required patterns that you wish to exclude in the 'Files / folders with partial names' list view.

For Instance: To exclude all ".log" files from backup, insert ".log" in the 'Files / folders with partial names' list view (right click on list view and select 'Insert partial file name' option).'

If you use a service like odrive, you could use it to sync with google drive, amazon cloud, dropbox, onedrive, box, s3, and it ignores a bunch of system files that we would like to ignore.

odrive will ignore certain files. They are typically system files and temporary files that are not intended to be synced to the cloud. 

These types of files will show on your desktop client but will not sync to the cloud. They will not have any badging. There is no list that is generated with them on it. They are literally ignored. 

This is the current "ignore" list. 

File names 
.odrive
.oxygenreserved
.oxygenmeta
.lock
.localized
icon/r
icon\r
.dropbox
.ds_store
thumbs.db
thumbs.db:encryptable
desktop.ini
.git
.gitignore
com1
com2
com3
com
com
com
com
com8
com9
lpt1
lpt2
lpt3
lpt4
lpt5
lpt6
lpt7
lpt8
lpt9
con
nul
prn
$mft
$mftmirr
$logfile
$volume
$attrdef
$bitmap
$boot
$badclus
$secure
$upcase
$extend
$quota
$objld
$reparse
System Volume Information


Extensions
.tmp
.download
.crdownload
.lrprev
.dwl
.dwl2
.m/~


Prefixes
._
~
.~
.lock
.dwl
.dwl2
.m/~

I remember trying odrive for another reason, to treat your cloud storage like a network drive, but I didn't stick with it for some reason. After dealling with a bunch of node-modules I think I am going to give it a whirl again.

[Pierrick B.1]

Well, I see there is nothing happening there ... I really don't get wtf they are doing. On CLI systems it has been proven it was not impossible to implement this.

If you wanna RT ; https://twitter.com/pierrickbignet/status/858260861814800384

[jniac]

+ 10000000
need this to avoid sync node modules

[AndyRozman]

+1 for .dropboxignore

I am currently using Dropbox for sharing Java (maven) projects, and problem is that I need to turn off syncronization on computer I am working on, and on end of workday, I need to clear all un-needed files and then reenable the sync, so that my source files can be synced. If I forget to enable sync again, I don't have files sync, or if I forget to turn in off on begining of the day, then a lot of files (that I don't need synced) get uploaded on dropbox account (and then deleted when I see I made a mistake).... PLEASE add this feature....

[sams]

There are many scenarios in which an application adds little hidden files to a folder, which should be considered local metadata and not synced to other computers.

For example:

• folder thumbnail database (added by some file managers)
• folder view settings file (added by some file managers)
• lock files (temporarily added by some software like RStudio)
• ...

Instead of providing a general solution to this problem, Dropbox currently hard-codes a small selection of such filenames to exclude from syncing:

• desktop.ini
• thumbs.db
• .ds_store
• icon\r
• .dropbox
• .dropbox.attr

This covers the metadata files added by the default file managers on Windows and Mac and by Dropbox itself, but not those added by other kinds of programs like RStudio and by third-party or Linux file managers.

Please provide a more general solution!

Other file syncing software has supported this for ages: For example, git allows users to specify a custom list of filenames to exclude in .gitignore.

If adding such a feature to the Dropbox UI is too much work, then make it so that we e.g. manually have to edit the .dropbox file to specify what filenames to exclude. That's fine. But please do add this feature one way or another!