Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

Wouldn't be great to have a .droppoxignore file that works as the .gitignore file?

I also desperately would like this feature. It would save money to Dropbox as it would not have to continuously synchronize and keep unlimited backups of temporary files each time I do a compilation in Visual Studio for example.
I totally agree with you that it is very trivial to implement.

Of course we could do it ourselves IF there was any API to hack with, but there is none for the Windows Desktop client. And the CLI interface on Linux is very limited. Having to build an alternative desktop client (assuming it were possible without sacrificing a lot of other features) just for this feature would be ridiculous. Ideally Dropbox could release the client as open source so we could tinker with it.

I have lost all hope in this matter, considering how they shut down Votebox a while ago and have not implemented any new feature for a long time (not even fixing certain bugs).

I .dropboxignore file would be great. I love using dropbox to back up my coding projects, but I want to ignore certain directories/files that match a specific pattern like for example the 'node_modules' directory or anything ending bin a '/bin' directory, this currently isn't possible as you have to specifically select each and every folder you want to ignore and there is no option for pattern matching. 

I know there's devs over at dropbox, pass this message forward :) thanks people!

I would love an advanced feature similar to that of .hgignore and .gitingore: A simple (hidden) file placable in (at least) the root directory for dropbox where I can specify grep-patterns for folders and files to ignore.
By making it a hidden file with regex-patterns, it automatically becomes an "advanced" feature, only available for those who understand what it is and how to use it.

I am loving Dropbox more and more. My use-case/need:
I do cross-platform development (Win/Mac) using an IDE (Intellij), and I have simply put my projects in dropbox, so I can do development and testing across machines/plattforms. This works very well for me, actually. But since IDE layouts and SDK-settings are specified in project-files, I have to close the IDE on one machine Before opening it on another. Otherwise the IDEs start battling over the settings-files. Also, I have to change the SDK-links every time I go from one to the other.
But if I could simply put a line in a ".dropboxignore"-file saying to ignore certain files, that would be wonderful!

There should be a way to regex match certain files and just ignore them in update. I though it is a great idea to sync my main work folder, but now various massive files that are trivial to regenerate gets synched and dropbox is constantly updating and chumming moving hundreds of megabytes around. There are hacks around that, but I'm just not very excited. It is a very basic functionality to have!

I use Dropbox for syncing my development project files but every time all the libraries are uploaded to Dropbox which increases the size of the project by a huge margin. 

It would be very helpful if there is a file like .gitignore implementation for Dropbox sync which will ignore files to be uploaded.

Please implement this feature in the upcoming version, it would be a great help for all of them in the developer community. 

Dropbox has already implemented selective sync in the desktop client so this might not be a very difficult task for Dropbox.

The number of "file/folder in use" errors I get is absurd. I am at the point where I just turn of Dropbox entirely if I want to actually do any work.

Dropbox needs to allow file extensions to be excluded from sync, they need to allow certain files and subfolders to be excluded from sync. There needs to be an option to "only sync files greater than XXX minutes old" so my entire dropbox isn't filled with temp files that only ever existed for a few milliseconds.

Never try and do any 3D simulations with files in a dropbox folder, never render any video with files in Dropbox, never render 3d models with files in dropbox, never edit music with files in dropbox. All of these automated, time & computationally intensive processes with be stopped dead in their tracks by Dropbox.

Hi Zagg,

You suggestion : "only sync files greater than XXX minutes old" is really interesting as well.

I hope some dropbox executives end up reading this post eventually, these features would be a great addition to dropbox.

> This idea is going to need a bit more support before we share your suggestion with our team. 

I would like to emphasize that the idea has received enough votes (see the linked ignore folder post above), but Dropbox hasn't implemented it fully. Dropbox's solution of ignoring a specific folder doesn't scale when you have lots of files across multiple machines. There's no substitute for a .dropboxignore or custom filter lists available in other cloud services.

Unfortunately, no one is finding this particular issue when they are searching, which explains the low number of votes.

Please pass this on to the development team. Other cloud services are implementing user-specified ignore filter lists — Dropbox hasn't. It's a big selling point amongst technical cloud services, of which Dropbox is still the most reliable. This feature is a must-have for professional users.