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.

[nicc777]

@MeganCan you please provide evidence of your statement? If not, please change the status back.

[Lars P.3]

Click on the "burgermenu" on Megan's post and report as "inappropriate content". I don't know what she was thinking. She must have woken up in the wrong side of the bed or something.

[nicc777]

@Lars P.3Thanks for the tip - done!

[MaksMaks991]

@Lars P.3 Done too.

Interesting thing: yesterday I contated Dropbox support to provide me any estimates on this idea or ask development team for such information. And today we have...hmm..we have a "solution".

I'm completely disappointed in Dropbox. Looks like they just wanted to shut us up. I think "Delivered" status means they will never return to this thread. Such a simple feature we asked for, and such awful implementation and attitude to us.

[leonheess]

dafuq? 

That does NOT deliver the feature originally requested? We want a .dropboxignore file where we can exclude files via regex but the file itself obviously needs to be synced and cross-platform compatible!!

[maku77]

Are we able to use the .dropboxignore file feature? Why is the status changed to delivered?

[birgersp]

Devs over at MEGA are about to implement this: https://github.com/meganz/MEGAsync/issues/206#issuecomment-1143136772

Just saying, cya Dropbox 🙂

[corylulu]

At least unmark this as "Delivered" as it feels legitimately insulting that after years of complaints that the mentioned solution was not sufficient, @Megan read exactly none of those comments and marked it as "Delivered".

[sebastian_]

Once upon a time, the Dropbox founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi built dropbox to serve their needs. As I recall, 2007-2011 many venture capital folks turned them down because there were "too many file sharing tools out there", from FTP to web-based portals. Drew and Arash insisted none did what they needed and persevered with a great vision. They were right, the VC’s were wrong, and Dropbox became the #1 company in the space — a product I personally love and pay for. Unfortunately, serving investors has become more important than Drew and Arash's mission — providing right-and-true value needed by end-users. A sad situation in this particular case as it’s washed away and hidden behind "delivered".

@Megan This feature was absolutely NOT delivered w/o a true .dropboxignore file, something every Dropbox engineer clearly understands. One critical use case for this requirement is to ignore all explosively large (and constantly changing) `node_modules` directories (that is often a child of multiple projects in a `dev` directory), but sync everything else. There are many other examples of developer / creative tools with cache directories that should NOT be syncing with Dropbox, sucking down bandwidth and cycles. Sometimes symlinks can be used, but often not, and targeted ignore as implemented does not work. It seems the decisions on this topic are likely too heavily biased with new revenue generation in mind. Please reinstate this community request and push it back up the ladder to someone responsible for product Vision + Value, balanced with new revenue generation.

[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.