Add .dropboxignore directory to exclude folders without using selective sync

+1

Dropbox is almost unusable for me without this feature. On the off-chance that it's useful, here's my particular usecase and how I'd like to see it solved.

I use npm a lot, its npm install command can create thousands of files very quickly. Dropbox then spends a long time trying to index all these files, during that time CPU usage is pegged at 100% and the fans on my laptop will be (noisily) spinning at maximum. I may delete, add or recreate all of these files several times during a day.

I'd like to be able to ignore all changes to files within a folder, based on a folder-name pattern. I never want to store these files on the dropbox server as they are trivial for me to recreate locally. I don't want to have to manually select each folder to be ignored.

e.g. the pattern node_modules/ would ignore any changes in any folder in my dropbox called node_modules.

This could either be via a file dropped into a folder (See git's .gitignore file for an example) or as a config setting within the dropbox client or web interface.

If I start ignoring a folder that is already stored on the Dropbox servers, I think I'd like Dropbox to delete the remotely stored files (this could be dangerous, maybe there's a better solution) and stop updating any other clients. The icon of the ignored folder should change to show that it's being ignored.

My Case
While it isn't that different from many others, it should be helpful here nonetheless. I'm a developer. I run online browser games, and I build the odd website for clients too. In modern web design, the node_modules folder is a frequent creation within my Dropbox folder.

Why Dropbox?
Primarily it's awesome for being able to easily restore previous versions of a file if I screw up, and of course for backup, and the ability to access files from anywhere.

Why do I need .dropboxignore?
node_modules contains thousands upon thousands of small code files in packages created by other developers. It slows Dropbox to a crawl, and consumes an aggressive amount of CPU (Mac OS 10.10). These node_modules packages are easily replaceable at any time, so are not needed within Dropbox. I would like for node_modules to be automatically ignored by Dropbox whenever I create a new web project without having to manually fumble through Selective Sync.

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

Selective Sync is an absolutely terrible solution for several reasons:

• First of all, it's clunky and counterintuitive when you simply want to ignore something. Selective Sync requires you to first add the very thing you want to ignore to Dropbox.
• Drilling down into your directory tree via the settings dialog is extremely slow and time consuming
• Once you activate Selective Sync on your directory it then removes the contents from your local drive and keeps it in the cloud - the irony of course being that you never wanted it in the cloud to begin with. And the one place where you actually want it has now been removed. (Circle back to first point)
• Directories containing Selective Sync settings must be removed via the Dropbox web app or you may never actually get rid of the directory you are trying to ignore.
• Lastly, and this is a big issue for me - if you ever move the corresponding folder in your local directory tree it breaks Selective Syncing requiring you to go through the entire process all over again. 

This is not a solution. This is a kludge is what it is. 

And I have to say I'm having a very hard time understanding why a big company like Dropbox cannot simply add a .dropboxignore feature like so many of us have been asking for. It's a very very simple concept that would help many of us achieve substantially more productivity from using their product.

Hi all

Thanks for all inputs and feedback on this request. This has been noted before (we don't always reply to threads here) and this has been passed on to our dev team.

jeremy B:  Sad to read your comment.  I too was "shouting about Dropbox from the rooftops" starting in 2008. Without exaggeration I have personally referred a few hundred Dropbox users over the years, and I have paid since around 2009/10 if memory serves me correctly.

Sadly, it seems Dropbox have developed a culture of real arrogance towards their paying customers and users.  

A good example of this arrogance, apart from all the unresolved complaints, is their refund policy. See [ Will I receive a refund if I cancel my Dropbox Pro subscription? ] which states the following:

 "In most cases, canceling your Pro subscription before it expires means you’ll finish your current subscription without receiving money back."

Why would any organisation not offer a refund, except in countries where they are forced by law to do so?   Arrogance and dishonesty are two possible reasons that comes to my mind. Perhaps someone knows of other reasons?

I sadly paid for another year this January, but I will ensure Dropbox won't get another single cent from me or many of my clients who are also paying Dropbox.

This long-winded Wired article "The Epic Story of Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire" gives a few clues to their current problems and their coming failure.

  "The danger is that as Amazon and Google and Microsoft [and Apple] expand their own services, they will restrict the growth of Dropbox. In that case, the company’s move into its own data centers could become more of a burden than a blessing."

The absolute keys to Dropbox's survival are:  Customer Satisfaction  & Quality of Service.

Both of which they are seriously failing at currently, and unless there's complete change of their priorities I see little chance of them improving things.

Customer loyalty can save a company (ie: Apple) from certain death when the management is bad. But I very much doubt Dropbox have a great amount of customer loyalty and good-will stored in their "account" among their paying customers.

Dropbox may have attracted 500 million users, but many of those are free accounts, with very little stuff inside.  As Apple, Microsoft & Google offer better file syncing alternatives baked into their OS many of these free users will rapidly fall away.

It will be paying customers that will keep Dropbox alive in a more competitive world.

But many of us are already switching to other solutions that are better and/or cheaper, including free open source solutions that are rapidly improving.

Mark my words, unless Dropbox Management wake up and smell reality, there is a rude awakening heading their way faster than most of us will even imagine today.

Pride (arrogance) always comes before a fall! 

The problem with selective sync is that the workflow is a bit backwards, where once you create the folder, you then have to go to selective sync and disable it, then delete what was uploaded via the web app.

It seems that selective sync is designed so that you have all folders uploaded to the cloud but don't want to download certain folders on certain systems. As opposed to having folders on a system that is not on the cloud at all.

Also another annoying thing is that it requires much more work if you have many projects (for example) each with the same kind of folders in them that you want to exclude. This would require that you repeat the same process I mentioned in the first paragraph for each project with no automation possible (without an unofficial extension).

Basically what we (or at least I'm assuming most of us) would like to have is a clone of the git .gitignore file or something to that effect.

Every time I see a response to this thread that isn't from someone at Dropbox (or IS someone from Dropbox giving an empty boilerplate answer) and I hate Dropbox that little bit more.

I suggest we give up trying to get Dropbox to treat us like customers they care about and instead use this thread to focus on helping each other: Let's continue to list Dropbox's competitors, along with their prices and all their pros and cons, in an attempt to find a decent alternative.

+1 

guys you must implement a .dropboxignore file (with a context-menu button that add a line to the .dropboxignore file for non-dev users)

that would be the perfect solution to everything.

+1, paying customer and I'm strongly considering switching due to the lack of this feature