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.

[madmax00178]

@Emma I have to just post, this is becoming a major issue for me. I've been a Dropbox customer for about 10 years now, but because I've stepped more into the development side of things, not having an ignore pattern file is causing all sorts of issues.

You asked for people to explain why this is important:

I already have a script that goes through and sets the ignore flag on `node_modules` folders in my Programming folder. But when switching branches, I will sometimes need to delete `node_modules` and reinstall packages with npm. When this happens, in the few minutes before my automatic script runs, Dropbox tries to sync the folder and I've had a few times where this can cause some serious issues.

Honestly, I can't imagine this is very hard to do. Please ask the development team to prioritize this. I will start my search for an alternative anyway, because I don't have much faith this will get addressed after 98 pages of comments.

[WreckItTim1]

re-bumping this because I am now seriously considering switching my distro over to another provider than Dropbox. It is just so unsustainable and unstable across multiple devices without this feature... 

[projectdeliverypartners]

See my post here:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/forums/filteredbylabelpage/board-id/Musicforum-board/label-name/don'...

I do this with powershell on windows, haven't investigated on mac yet but thought this might help anyway.

[projectdeliverypartners]

This feature does now exist (in my view), its the 'don't sync to dropbox' command. See my post here:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/forums/filteredbylabelpage/board-id/Musicforum-board/label-name/don'...

[nicc777]

@projectdeliverypartnersFunctionally you could maybe make the argument... maybe...

However, a simple ignore file is just a lot more convenient, especially for developer folks. Especially since we can automatically let some workflow create it if we start a new project.

The supplied script you showed may work, but I guess the files have to exist. Some of these temporary directories are very dynamic with temporary files coming and going all the time, causing a lot of sync traffic, so my gut feel that it's not really what we as a community wanted.

Still useful for more basic use cases.

[WreckItTim1]

@projectdeliverypartners no that is not the functionality asked for by the OP, or I imagine most of the people in this thread as we have been discussing this for quite some time. What you are talking about is what the OP is referring to as select sync, and most of us are very well aware of it. It requires a whole process to be done on every device that you set up dropbox to sync on (now and in the future), and every folder/file that you want to not sync (again, now and in the future). The process with select sync is: sync dropbox, turn off dropbox, create the folder, use the select sync command on the folder to turn it off, add your files to the folder, turn on dropbox and resync. Not only is this mundane and sometimes unreasonable if dealing with a large number of devices and/or folders, but it is also not safe. If one folder on any device is not properly set to select sync then it will corrupt your entire sync across all devices and creates conflicts which must then each be cleaned up and the whole process repeated - for every device. This is why other services, such as github, have a .ignore file. 

Further, select sync, as is, creates other issues because it still goes into that folder and locally syncs everything which can create problems with specific files -- such as in here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Apps-and-Installations/Bug-quot-unable-to-sync-quot-a-file-that-is-i...

[projectdeliverypartners]

I’m not sure what could be more convenient and appropriate within this context as right click, don’t sync to Dropbox. It is not selective sync at all, selective sync lets you only download certain folders you specify and the rest are ‘hidden’ in the sense that they only are visible to you on the web/through a browser. That’s not what this command does. It removes that folder and anything in it from your Dropbox period. After you run it, go on line and have a look, that folder will be gone yet on your local computer it will be there, still contained within your Dropbox/…. Folder but it will not be syncing or uploading until you tell it to be running the oppose command. 

[projectdeliverypartners]

@nicc777  the files don’t have to exist as it allows the use of wildcards so you could do all files of a type or partial name match if you knew what they would be or an enclosing folder “foldernme/*”. You would at a minimum have to know where the files are about to be created in the case where they are yet to be created. 

[WreckItTim1]

@projectdeliverypartners Dude you’re not using this at the level we are discussing. It’s not just handling one folder and you’re done. It’s accessing sync operations across several devices, through remote operations. As is, without an ignore file and just with using the ignore command, you have to manage each folder for each device separately.

The OP mixed up selective sync with ignore 10 years ago, and for some reason the admins keep merging this with other threads that more lucidly state the problem. It’s about ignoring a local folder across several devices, as they are being setup. That’s the whole point of a an .ignore file. Again, think about GitHub and why it has one. 

[projectdeliverypartners]

ah sorry I didn't realise we were talking about remote connections. the OP wrote:

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"

To me, thats exactly what 'don't sync to dropbox' does.

To be clear then, are you saying that if I were to set a folder as 'don't sync to dropbox' and then on another computer create a new file inside that very same folder and hit save etc it actually will sync/upload to the DB because that command is per machine?