IgnoreList is a UTF-8 encoded text file that allows you to specify single files, paths or rules for ignoring during the synchronization job. Each line of the IgnoreList file represents a separate rule. All the files that fall under the ignore filter are not indexed and not counted in the “Size” column in Sync main view.
If you don’t want Sync to track and sync some files in your folder, use IgnoreList. On the other hand, you can remove the default rules to get those files synced as well.
It's advisable, but not compulsory, to have same IgnoreList on all peers so as not to get confused about difference in size of sync shares.
Please note: IgnoreList is case sensitive!
Wildcards
IgnoreList supports ‘?’ and ‘*‘ wildcard symbols.
‘?’ substitutes any single character in a filename
‘*’ substitutes a string of several (any number) characters in a filename
For example, an IgnoreList containing the following entries:
*.pdf
abc?.txt
will force to ignore all the .PDF files in your sync folder, as well as all .TXT files starting with ‘abc’, followed by some letter.
Paths
Each line in the ignore list can represent both a directory and a file. For example, this line:
My Test
will force Sync to ignore all the files called “My Test”, as well as all the directories called “My Test”, including their content and all subdirectories.
If an ignore filter consists of 2 components, it will be applied to the root of a sync folder. For example:
ABC\CDE F
will ignore subfolder “CDE F" of “ABC" which is located only in the root of a sync folder. The folder "123\ABC\CDE F" will not be ignored.
Another example:
FOO\*
will ignore all files in the folder named “FOO” located in the root of a sync folder. Still the folder tree below FOO will be synced.
If you want to ignore all the “FOO” folders including the ones deeper than the root level, you’ll need to add a line "FOO".
The second component can have zero length, which means that presence of a delimiter character in a filter also forces the filter to be applied to the root sync folder. For example:
\FOO
will force Sync to ignore a "FOO" folder only in the root sync directory.
For entries containing ‘#‘ sign, for example, “#recycle“ use ‘?’ wildcard symbol instead:
?recycle
Important: on UNIX-based systems use "/" as a path separator.
EXAMPLE
With the above mentioned ignore lines, the following folder structure will behave this way
\ABC //wil be synced
CDE F //will not be synced, ignored by ABC\CDE F
\123 //will be synced
ABC //will be synced
CDE //will be synced
Filename.pdf //will not be synced, ignored by *.pdf
\FOO //will not be synced, ignored by FOO\*
QWER //will not be synced
Double asterisk allows to ignore any amount of subfolders between root folder and target folder. For example,
a/**/b
filter will ignore folders a/b, a/x/b, a/x/y/b and so on.
Delimiters
When composing a filter consisting of 2 or more components, note that path delimiters are OS-dependent and not universal. So please do not forget to use “/“ for Mac and unix-based OSes, while for Windows OSes use “\”.Note: the IgnoreList is applied to the folder where it is contained and its subfolders. It will not work with files that have already been synced.
Timings and delays
Once Sync has scanned and indexed the directory tree of a sync folder, all the structural info is going to be stored in its database and always passed to other peers (until you disconnect the sync folder).It means that if you create or edit your IgnoreList file after the directory was added to Sync, the folder structure will always be fully synced, however, actual files / folders added to the ignore list will not be passed to other peers.
Sync re-reads IgnoreList every time it is changed or (if system notifications are not coming for some reason) every folder_rescan_interval. We recommend to restart Sync if you want to apply changes in the IgnoreList immediately.