How to make Dropbox “ignore” specific folders in the sync

dropbox

I tried using Dropbox to sync my computer's code files, however it syncs everything. I want to be able to configure Dropbox not to sync folders with specific names like ".git" and/or "target" as target folders get generated automatically and gets huge as the development goes.

Is there a way to configure Dropbox to ignore some folders (auto generated or not)?

Best Answer

Starting early 2020 you can actually exclude files and directories from sync.

Under Linux the command is:

attr -s com.dropbox.ignored -V 1 /path/to/somewhere

Under macOS the command is about same:

xattr -w com.dropbox.ignored 1 /path/to/somewhere

For the command under Windows see another answer, or:

Set-Content -Path C:\Users\yourname\Dropbox\Example -Stream com.dropbox.ignored -Value 1

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Dropbox is a cloud syncing service, its not a file hosting service. The whole idea is to sync your files across all your devices.

How to tell dropbox to ignore git files

On Linux Dropbox has a client (dropbox) and a deamon (dropboxd).

The client has the exclude command, which you can use to exclude directories. E.g. to exclude node_modules from Dropbox you can enter dropbox exclude add ./node_modules

dropbox help exclude will print the help information:

dropbox exclude [list]
dropbox exclude add [DIRECTORY] [DIRECTORY] ...
dropbox exclude remove [DIRECTORY] [DIRECTORY] ...

"list" prints a list of directories currently excluded from syncing.
"add" adds one or more directories to the exclusion list, then resynchronizes Dropbox.
"remove" removes one or more directories from the exclusion list, then resynchronizes Dropbox.
With no arguments, executes "list".
Any specified path must be within Dropbox.

Best Answer

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