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.

[Erik B.8]

+1, would make my life so much easier.
Thinking of writing together something on my own if I can't find a decent replacement soon. Also a pretty significant annoyance to have my file history spammed by all kinds of files only needed on the current machine. File indexing takes a long time nowadays as well, perhaps that'd be speeded up by a .dropboxignore, or not. But none the less it's a feature I'd expect to exist, since it doesn't seem to add too much complexity and add significant value (and an edge over competitors) to the service.

[Sam B.27]

Considering this would save them space & bandwidth costs, you'd think this feature would warrant a response from dropbox.

[sam m.]

I've given up at this point, I don't think dropbox really cares about their previously core product. Now they're much more interested in adding features like image hosting, and office integration, while their original sync tech gets no attention and feature requests like this are ignored. I let my linked credit card expire and won't be renewing when my current membership runs out. Pretty disappointing since I've been a paying customer for years now.

[Michael N.1]

I would love to see this implemented, and if so, I'll reconsider coming back to Dropbox.

But like others have hinted at, I too gave up. Syncing node_modules was killing me and my computer. Instead, I decided to go with rsync.net and I wrote my own Node CLI (https://github.com/manovotny/node-backup) to run or create rsync scripts, which includes the ability to ignore files and folders. Hooked up the the Mac's built-in cron, it's serving my quite nicely as an alternative.

[Jeremy B.]

No doubt Dropbox is a company which places importance on simplicity. However, if they're worried about adding complexity, I would recommend adding it as an undocumented feature. Maybe just a mention in a changelog somewhere. Then people all over the internet will write tutorials on how to do it - and the people who are looking for the feature (developers / advanced users) will have no trouble finding this information - not to mention go on to passionately share Dropbox with colleagues, friends and family.

[Frank E.]

+1 for .dropboxignore

[Andrey S.2]

+1

[eddie j.]

+1e100 for .dropboxignore

[luciano c.1]

I guess the people at dropbox did see this thread, so I thought to tweet it for their convenience:
https://twitter.com/unlucio/status/616141948441628672

please RT if you like.

[elias b.]

Agreed. There is cold be hidden for advanced users feature. We are all here by '.dropboxignore' keyword. So it wouldn’t be a problem to figure out how it works. Just implement it.

I just have stopped the sync of my Projects folder because it was 3Gb+. Mostly it was .git and node_modules folders. With such setup Dropbox is downloading file list forever. And consuming to much CPU