1SYNCTHING-STIGNORE(5) Syncthing SYNCTHING-STIGNORE(5)
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6 syncthing-stignore - Prevent files from being synchronized to other
7 nodes
8
10 .stignore
11
13 If some files should not be synchronized to (or from) other devices, a
14 file called .stignore can be created containing file patterns to ig‐
15 nore. The .stignore file must be placed in the root of the synced
16 folder. The .stignore file itself will never be synced to other de‐
17 vices, although it can #include files that are synchronized between de‐
18 vices. All patterns are relative to the synced folder root. The con‐
19 tents of the .stignore file must be UTF-8 encoded.
20 NOTE:
22 Note that ignored files can block removal of an otherwise empty di‐
23 rectory. See below for the (?d) prefix to allow deletion of ignored
24 files.
25
27 The .stignore file contains a list of file or path patterns. The first
28 pattern that matches will decide the fate of a given file.
29 • Regular file names match themselves, i.e. the pattern foo matches the
31 files foo, subdir/foo as well as any directory named foo. Spaces are
32 treated as regular characters, except for leading and trailing spa‐
33 ces, which are automatically trimmed.
34 • Asterisk (*) matches zero or more characters in a filename, but does
36 not match the directory separator. te*ne matches telephone, sub‐
37 dir/telephone but not tele/phone.
38 • Double asterisk (**) matches as above, but also directory separators.
40 te**ne matches telephone, subdir/telephone and tele/sub/dir/phone.
41 • Question mark (?) matches a single character that is not the direc‐
43 tory separator. te??st matches tebest but not teb/st or test.
44 • Square brackets ([]) denote a character range: [a-z] matches any
46 lower case character.
47 • Curly brackets ({}) denote a set of comma separated alternatives:
49 {banana,pineapple} matches either banana or pineapple.
50 • Backslash (\) “escapes” a special character so that it loses its spe‐
52 cial meaning. For example, \{banana\} matches {banana} exactly and
53 does not denote a set of alternatives as above.
54 NOTE:
56 Escaped characters are not supported on Windows, where \ is the path
57 separator. If you still need to match files that have square or
58 curly brackets in their names, one possible workaround is to replace
59 them with ?, which will then match any character. For example, you
60 can type ?banana? to match both [banana] and {banana}, and so on.
61 • A pattern beginning with / matches in the root of the synced folder
63 only. /foo matches foo but not subdir/foo.
64 • A pattern beginning with #include results in loading patterns from
66 the named file. It is an error for a file to not exist or be included
67 more than once. Note that while this can be used to include patterns
68 from a file in a subdirectory, the patterns themselves are still rel‐
69 ative to the synced folder root. Example: #include more-patterns.txt.
70 Any #include directives inside a file loaded by #include require
72 paths specified relative to the directory containing the loaded file,
73 rather than the synchronised root directory.
74 • A pattern beginning with a ! prefix negates the pattern: matching
76 files are included (that is, not ignored). This can be used to over‐
77 ride more general patterns that follow.
78 • A pattern beginning with a (?i) prefix enables case-insensitive pat‐
80 tern matching. (?i)test matches test, TEST and tEsT. The (?i) prefix
81 can be combined with other patterns, for example the pattern
82 (?i)!picture*.png indicates that Picture1.PNG should be synchronized.
83 On Mac OS and Windows, patterns are always case-insensitive.
84 • A pattern beginning with a (?d) prefix enables removal of these files
86 if they are preventing directory deletion. This prefix should be used
87 by any OS generated files which you are happy to be removed.
88 • A line beginning with // is a comment and has no effect. The same
90 double slashes in any other place are interpreted literally, e.g.
91 trying to do file // comment will make Syncthing look for a file
92 called file // comment.
93 NOTE:
95 Prefixes can be specified in any order (e.g. “(?d)(?i)”), but cannot
96 be in a single pair of parentheses (not “(?di)”).
97 NOTE:
99 Include patterns (that begin with !) cause Syncthing to traverse the
100 entire directory tree regardless of other ignore patterns. If the
101 watcher is enabled, the entire directory tree will be watched as
102 well.
103 Top-level include patterns are treated as special cases and will not
105 force Syncthing to scan (or watch) the entire directory tree. For
106 example: !/foo is a top-level include pattern, while !/foo/bar is
107 not.
108
110 Given a directory layout starting at the synced folder’s root:
111 .DS_Store
113 .stignore
114 foo
115 foofoo
116 bar/
117 baz
118 quux
119 quuz
120 bar2/
121 baz
122 frobble
123 My Pictures/
124 Img15.PNG
125 and an .stignore file with the contents:
127 (?d).DS_Store
129 !frobble
130 !quuz
131 foo
132 *2
133 qu*
134 (?i)my pictures
135 all files and directories called “foo”, ending in a “2” or starting
137 with “qu” will be ignored. The end result becomes:
138 .DS_Store # ignored, will be deleted if gets in the way of parent directory removal
140 foo # ignored, matches "foo"
141 foofoo # synced, does not match "foo" but would match "foo*" or "*foo"
142 bar/ # synced
143 baz # synced
144 quux # ignored, matches "qu*"
145 quuz # synced, matches "qu*" but is excluded by the preceding "!quuz"
146 bar2/ # synced, despite matching "*2" due to child frobble
147 baz # ignored, due to parent being ignored
148 frobble # synced, due to "!frobble"
149 My Pictures/ # ignored, matched case insensitive "(?i)my pictures" pattern
150 Img15.PNG # ignored, due to parent being ignored
151 NOTE:
153 Please note that directory patterns ending with a slash some/direc‐
154 tory/ matches the content of the directory, but not the directory
155 itself. If you want the pattern to match the directory and its con‐
156 tent, make sure it does not have a / at the end of the pattern.
157 New in version 1.19.0: Default patterns can be configured which will
159 take effect when automatically accepting a folder from a remote device.
160 The GUI suggests same the patterns when adding a folder manually. In
161 either case, the .stignore file is created with these defaults if none
162 is present yet.
163
166 The Syncthing Authors
167
169 2014-2019, The Syncthing Authors
170v1.25.0 Oct 05, 2023 SYNCTHING-STIGNORE(5)