{"id":27986,"date":"2020-01-30T15:58:06","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T20:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=27986"},"modified":"2020-02-04T14:49:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T19:49:16","slug":"dropbox-ignore-feature-in-beta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/30\/dropbox-ignore-feature-in-beta\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropbox Ignore Feature in Beta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/help.dropbox.com\/files-folders\/restore-delete\/ignored-files\">Dropbox<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=22189938\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/help.dropbox.com\/files-folders\/restore-delete\/ignored-files\"><p>You can set a file or folder to be &ldquo;ignored&rdquo; by Dropbox. This allows you to organize files and folders in the Dropbox folder on your computer without storing them on dropbox.com or on the Dropbox server at all.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Open the <b>Terminal<\/b> application on your computer.<\/li>\n<li>Type <pre>xattr -w com.dropbox.ignored 1. \n<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<li>Type the location of the file next to that.<ul>\n<li>You can also drag and drop the file or folder that you want to ignore from your file browser into the Terminal and it will populate with the location of the file.<\/li>\n<li>It should look something like this:<pre>xattr -w com.dropbox.ignored 1 \/Users\/yourname\/Dropbox\\ \\(Personal\\)\/YourFileName.pdf<\/pre><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It&rsquo;s hard to believe that Dropbox has lacked this feature for 12 years.<\/p>\n<p>I think it would have been better to use a <tt>.dropboxignore<\/tt> file rather than an xattr:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You could exclude files by pattern rather than individually.<\/li>\n<li>You could exclude files that don&rsquo;t currently exist (like build products).<\/li>\n<li>The exclusion would be more robust in the face of backups, version control, and apps that don&rsquo;t preserve xattrs when saving.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/27\/dropbox-no-longer-follows-external-symlinks\/\">Dropbox No Longer Follows External Symlinks<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"dropbox-ignore-feature-in-beta-update-2020-02-04\">Update (2020-02-04): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DaveWoodX\/status\/1223159887275925504\">Dave Wood<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DaveWoodX\/status\/1223159887275925504\">\n<p>Also, this would make the process the same regardless of platform.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dropbox (via Hacker News): You can set a file or folder to be &ldquo;ignored&rdquo; by Dropbox. This allows you to organize files and folders in the Dropbox folder on your computer without storing them on dropbox.com or on the Dropbox server at all. [&#8230;] Open the Terminal application on your computer. Type xattr -w com.dropbox.ignored [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-01-30T20:58:10Z","apple_news_api_id":"f2d07ea5-5deb-4979-b6b7-83db02a2fccf","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-02-04T19:49:19Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A8tB-pV3rSXm2t4PbAqL8zw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[47,1902,30,32,1666,269],"class_list":["post-27986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-dropbox","tag-extended-attributes","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-10-15","tag-syncing"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27986"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28037,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27986\/revisions\/28037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}