Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

I got a similar response:

Thank you for following up here. We've relayed that Community thread to the team, and we appreciate the feedback.

I wonder if there's another way we can get in touch.

Edit: I've opened a support ticket. Hopefully we can get SOME feedback from a developer in the team.

Hello everyone

Thanks so much for the continuous feedback on this feature. We've taken notes of your points and pain points and have passed this on internally. I encourage you to keep letting us know about things you like/dislike or would like to see differently but please not we may not reply to all comments or take immediate actions on anything. 

Thanks again,

Hi Ed, thanks for replying to us. It's been 10 months since this thread was created, and it remains the most popular issue raised on these forums (even not including the other highly voted threads duplicating a request for the same feature).

When do you think the internal team will make a decision on this? Right now it's actually hindering my work on a regular basis. I don't wish to create new projects in DropBox because as soon as I create a `node_modules` (a standard folder used in nearly all modern web development) I will be looking at 6000+ file uploads.

I understand that, from a business point of view, DropBox isn't interested in helping me with this problem. I appreciate that it's in your interest to get us to upload as many files as possible in the hope we will run out of space, forcing us to hand over more money to your company (I'm already a Pro customer, so I suppose that would mean Business).

It's worth noting, however, that even though `node_modules` can easily amount to 6000+ files, it typically only equates to around 20MB. There is very little gain for DropBox, and an awful lot of pain for your customers.

So can you please tell us when we are likely to see a decision made on this issue so we can decide whether or not to stay with your company.

Thanks again for your time.

Johnny

Also with Vagrant VMs, I upload hundreds of GBs per day of data I don't want to keep as it is disposable data. I create and destroy so many VMs per day, each multiple GBs that should just be ignored in all subdirectories.

I am a paying customer, but you could save yourself a lot of money in bandwidth, disk space and other resources, if I could just ignore `.vagrant` directories in all subfolders.

It just seems so crazy this hasn't been addressed and your customers (your paying customers) are screaming out for this

Adding a .dropboxignore file as an advanced alternative to selective sync is exactly what I am looking for. I have the .node_module problem others have mentioned. In my case I can often not get it to ever sync because the file paths get too long. That ends up preventing all of my other files from syncing.

For all those with the .node_module issue: read my comment of the 15/09, which I report below.

This workaround prevents Dropbox to synchronise the content of any folder. It does use selective sync as a first step, but it does not have its biggest limitation.

I am using it myself for a slightly different application, and it works.

> Hi guys,
>
> I found a workaround to have Dropbox ignore the content of a folder; credits go to Raymond of the Unofficial Dropbox Wiki:
>
> These steps will help you exclude a folder from syncing:
>
> Lets say you have a folder that you want to exclude called NON_CLOUD.
> We first create an empty folder that is renamed to NON_CLOUD and place it into Dropbox.
> Then, we use selective sync to unsync that folder: https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/selective-sync-overview
> Next, move your actual NON_CLOUD folder into the previous location of the empty NON_CLOUD folder.
> That folder will have a grey circle with a “minus” sign and will not be synced to Dropbox.
> It is not ideal but it does work for me.
>
> Cheers,
> Guido

I already have grey "minus" signs on my node_modules folders using normal selective sync. What's the difference between this, and your method?

@Jeremy:

what we need is the ability to crate a pattern that will apply to the sync other than manually going through all the directory tree and excluding those items since it's too low and frustrating.

just lik e a .gitignore file for example

@Jeremy B.

If you use selective sync on a folder, Dropbox removes it straight away from your hard drive. (At least it does so on my Mac.)

This workaround will make Dropbox ignore the folder while keeping it in your hard drive.

@Guido Using Selective Sync doesn't delete anything from your HD, it just decouples it from the server version. 

Edit: I was wrong.