NAME

       syncthing-stignore - Prevent files from being synchronized to other nodes

SYNOPSIS

          .stignore

DESCRIPTION

       If  some  files  should  not  be  synchronized  to  (or from) other devices, a file called
       .stignore can be created containing file patterns to ignore. The .stignore  file  must  be
       placed  in the root of the folder. The .stignore file itself will never be synced to other
       devices, although it can  #include  files  that  are  synchronized  between  devices.  All
       patterns  are  relative  to  the  folder root.  The contents of the .stignore file must be
       UTF-8 encoded.

       NOTE:
          Note that ignored files can block removal of an otherwise empty directory.   See  below
          for the (?d) prefix to allow deletion of ignored files.

PATTERNS

       The  .stignore  file  contains  a  list  of  file or path patterns. The first pattern that
       matches will decide the fate of a given file.

       • Regular file names match themselves,  i.e.  the  pattern  foo  matches  the  files  foo,
         subdir/foo as well as any directory named foo. Spaces are treated as regular characters,
         except for leading and trailing spaces, which are automatically trimmed.

       • Asterisk (*) matches zero or more characters in a  filename,  but  does  not  match  the
         directory separator. te*ne matches telephone, subdir/telephone but not tele/phone.

       • Double  asterisk  (**)  matches as above, but also directory separators.  te**ne matches
         telephone, subdir/telephone and tele/sub/dir/phone.

       • Question mark (?) matches a single character that is not the directory separator. te??st
         matches tebest but not teb/st or test.

       • Square brackets ([]) denote a character range: [a-z] matches any lower case character.

       • Curly  brackets  ({})  denote  a set of comma separated alternatives: {banana,pineapple}
         matches either banana or pineapple.

       • Backslash (\) “escapes” a special character so that it loses its  special  meaning.  For
         example,  \{banana\}  matches {banana} exactly and does not denote a set of alternatives
         as above. Escaped characters are not supported on Windows.

       • A pattern beginning with / matches in the root of the folder only.  /foo matches foo but
         not subdir/foo.

       • A pattern beginning with #include results in loading patterns from the named file. It is
         an error for a file to not exist or be included more than once. Note that while this can
         be  used  to include patterns from a file in a subdirectory, the patterns themselves are
         still relative to the folder root. Example: #include more-patterns.txt.

       • A pattern beginning with a ! prefix negates the pattern:  matching  files  are  included
         (that is, not ignored). This can be used to override more general patterns that follow.

       • A  pattern  beginning  with  a  (?i)  prefix  enables case-insensitive pattern matching.
         (?i)test matches test, TEST and tEsT.  The  (?i)  prefix  can  be  combined  with  other
         patterns,  for  example the pattern (?i)!picture*.png indicates that Picture1.PNG should
         be synchronized. On Mac OS and Windows, patterns are always case-insensitive.

       • A pattern beginning with a (?d) prefix enables  removal  of  these  files  if  they  are
         preventing  directory  deletion.  This  prefix  should be used by any OS generated files
         which you are happy to be removed.

       • A line beginning with // is a comment and has no effect.

       NOTE:
          Prefixes can be specified in any order (e.g. “(?d)(?i)”), but cannot  be  in  a  single
          pair of parentheses (not “(?di)”).

       NOTE:
          Include  patterns  (that begin with !) cause Syncthing to traverse and watch the entire
          directory tree regardless of other ignore patterns.

          Top-level include patterns are treated as special cases and will not force Syncthing to
          scan  the  entire  directory  tree.  For example: !/foo is a top-level include pattern,
          while !/foo/bar is not.

EXAMPLE

       Given a directory layout:

          .DS_Store
          foo
          foofoo
          bar/
              baz
              quux
              quuz
          bar2/
              baz
              frobble
          My Pictures/
              Img15.PNG

       and an .stignore file with the contents:

          (?d).DS_Store
          !frobble
          !quuz
          foo
          *2
          qu*
          (?i)my pictures

       all files and directories called “foo”, ending in a “2” or  starting  with  “qu”  will  be
       ignored. The end result becomes:

          .DS_Store     # ignored, will be deleted if gets in the way of parent directory removal
          foo           # ignored, matches "foo"
          foofoo        # synced, does not match "foo" but would match "foo*" or "*foo"
          bar/          # synced
              baz       # synced
              quux      # ignored, matches "qu*"
              quuz      # synced, matches "qu*" but is excluded by the preceding "!quuz"
          bar2/         # synced, despite matching "*2" due to child frobble
              baz       # ignored, due to parent being ignored
              frobble   # synced, due to "!frobble"
          My Pictures/  # ignored, matched case insensitive "(?i)my pictures" pattern
              Img15.PNG # ignored, due to parent being ignored

       NOTE:
          Please  note  that  directory  patterns ending with a slash some/directory/ matches the
          content of the directory, but not the directory itself. If  you  want  the  pattern  to
          match  the  directory and its content, make sure it does not have a / at the end of the
          pattern.

AUTHOR

       The Syncthing Authors

COPYRIGHT

       2014-2019, The Syncthing Authors