You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
How to exclude (or ignore) files from syncing (different thing than Selective Sync)
It will be so useful if I could exclude certain files from syncing based on a file mask. Examples:
.tmp
*.xml~
mailbox.psd
aa.t??
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!Another repeat of an existing (and much asked for) feature. Come on, DropBox -- Respond already!
I know many user suggested this idea before, but clearly they haven't got real answers, so I reissue this:
Why won't Dropbox implements the .dropboxignore/.dbignore feature?
It would be really convenient to have some sort of ".gitigrore"-like feature. This is really not so big deal to implement (just some regex tricks), and so many users have been asking for this.
No, we (the group of users asking for this feature) don't want to get the "Use the selective sync feature", because it works only on folders, and when a new one created it needs to be checked from the menu manually, It's just a pain in the ***. We want a real .dropboxignore feature, not a workaround!
- Mark
Super User II
If it isnt 'a not so big deal' to implement why not do it yourself via the API?
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 reiterate the screaming in the same direction. Please Dropbox add a feature (.dropboxignore or any other technical solution!) to exclude single files or whole file types from syncing. This would bring you at pair of some of your competitors, such as Carbonite, which allow syncing "preferences" at the single file level.
Many linux text editors, IDEs and many more programs create temporary and "junk" files that should not be synced. Regex excluding would be really appreciated.
I need this feature too, AutoCAD for example creates .bak files (backup files) in the same directory of the source file, so Dropbox is uploading these .bak files all the time...
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.
Hi @ashutoshw3. I simple use MegaSync.
The Desktop App is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
And Yes. You can define recursive exclusions just like in .gitignore.
Another feature that was decisive in my choice is the ability to watch one or more directories that are outside the main sync folder.
Example: Documents, Music, etc ... Individually, without moving them to the main sync directory.If Dropbox implements at least these 2 features I'll be using it again.
