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.

[TAM+CZ A.]

@bohende

yes there are alternatives, check out my post here.  And fyi, I am not a Microsft employee or anything like that, I'm just a long time Dropbox user that's tired of them not listening.  So I tried out something new, plain and simple.

@Ben C.21

Yes "technically" there is a selective sync feature, but the problem is as you stated - not user friendly.  And much more than that, the auto-inheriting of new folders is just ridiculous, and Microsoft has already proved how easy it is to solve with just a simple checkbox in their OneDrive interface.  So what excuse is there for Dropbox to not do the same?

[Ben C.21]

@TAM+CZ A.

My point is that it is possible - not "technically", but actually - and very easy, even though it is not as straightforward as it should be. But a lot of people have been commenting saying that this makes Dropbox unusable for them, which is simply not true, they just don't understand how Selective Sync works (which is a little odd considering many of them are clearly devs). But I agree that Dropbox should improve it; my suggested solution is that when you deselect a folder for syncing it should ask whether you want to remove the local copy but leave it in the cloud and on other devices, or vice-versa, instead of assuming you just want to remove the local copy. I agree an option for whether to automatically sync new folders would be good - ideally you would choose between never sync, always sync, or inherit from parent.

I was interested to read about OneDrive, which I already use, but hadn't explored its selective sync features. I've had a play, and as far as I can tell it works exactly like Dropbox - when I enabled selective sync and created a new folder it was automatically enabled for syncing. New folders inside unsynced folders are not synced. Can you confirm exactly how you think it works differently?

[Michael-]

@Ben C.21 I think you know that this is not the feature everyone is asking about. Being able to check a box for _one_ folder on _one_ machine is not helpful. Most of the requests here are about ignoring entire classes of directories from being synced (dependency directories like "node_modules", build directories like "target"), and this is not possible in Dropbox.

[Ben C.21]

@jmmk

Yes, I'm aware that many people want a pattern-based solution, and I would warmly welcome it. That said, you can't definitively say that that is what this "idea" is all about when the OP himself suggested a possible non-pattern based approach that you consider unhelpful in the idea description that people have voted for.

Again, I just wanted to point out that it is already possible to easily exclude local folders like node_modules from syncing, as a number of commenters have implied that they did not realise this was possible even on an individual, manual basis.

[Raju R.]

I think most of the people here are aware of selective sync so the question is not what we already have in dropbox but what we want there. .dropboxignore or similar way to deal with pattern based ignoring method which could enable you to selective sync "files."  Further  we are also talking about the automatic addition of folders into the dropbox which creates extra workaround if you want to have files in your machine not in the cloud. 

I think dropbox is ignoring this issue is about business. They want all to fill their free drives as fast as possible so that people will be compeled to buy their extra space. I can see this is only the most logical reason behind. 

[bohende]

@Ben C.21

I did not do adequate research. The selective sync dialog says "If your hard drive is full, you don't necessarily need to delete files. If you have enough Dropbox space, you can instead use selective sync" and, because the opposite is not explicitly mentioned anywhere obvious, I stopped looking.

If anyone else is still confused, here's the roundabout way I used the dropbox GUI to stop syncing a folder:

1. Move everything inside the target folder to some other folder outside of dropbox

2. Open the selective sync dialog, select the target folder, hit OK. This folder will be deleted.

3. Create a new folder of the same name in the same location, move everything back into this folder

Buuutttt since you poked fun at developers for not being able to figure this out, I did what I should have done a long time ago: `man dropbox` and lo and behold the dropbox command line interface comes complete with beautifully simple exclude functionality!

From the command line the solution is super simple: `dropbox exclude add /path/to/folder` (as mentioned here: https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/selective-sync-overview .. again, I clearly didn't do enough research before jumping to conclusions)

Thank you Ben C.21, my love for dropbox has been restored!

[clares]

As others have said there is already a request for this: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Ignore-folder-without-selective-sync/idi-p/5926

That thread has more votes so I suggest upvoting it so the votes aren't split!

It looks like currently this feature is the top-voted Dropbox feature request and, thanks to this thread, ALSO the fourth most popular, so it's clearly needed.

[Rich]

Merged Why won't Dropbox add a .gitignore like feature? into this thread.

[mirkea]

This x 1000000000

The current selective sync system is better than nothing but it's still bad to say the least

As a developer I sync my projects between my home and work PC and this ends up syncing a lot of trash and locally built files that don't need to be synced.

A file in the root of the Dropnox folder similar to .gitignore where you define a set of masks/filters for files and folders would be ideal

[marvolo]

How is this still not implemented? Something so simple but really necessary. I am considering a few cloud storage options and this has turned me off dropbox completely... It's really a shame cause I love everything else about dropbox.