Rclone Filter Rules Explained: Include and Exclude Patterns for Smarter Syncs

March 6, 2026 · 6 min read

Senior Engineer

Syncing everything is wasteful. Syncing the wrong things is dangerous. Rclone's filter rules let you precisely control what gets transferred — but the syntax can be confusing. This guide breaks it all down with practical examples.

When you sync or copy files between clouds, you rarely want everything. Maybe you need only .pdf files, or everything except .tmp files, or files modified in the last 7 days, or files under 100 MB. Rclone's filter system handles all of this — and RcloneView lets you configure these filters visually in your job settings.

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How Rclone Filters Work

Rclone processes filter rules in order, top to bottom. For each file, it checks the rules one by one:

If a rule matches, the file is included or excluded (depending on the rule).
If no rule matches, the file is included by default.

This "first match wins" behavior is critical to understand. Order matters.

Basic Patterns

Exclude specific files or folders

--exclude "*.tmp"
--exclude "node_modules/**"
--exclude ".DS_Store"

These patterns exclude:

All .tmp files anywhere in the tree.
The entire node_modules folder and its contents.
All .DS_Store files (macOS metadata).

Include specific files only

--include "*.pdf"
--include "*.docx"

When you use --include, rclone automatically excludes everything else. So --include "*.pdf" means "only sync PDFs, nothing else."

Combine include and exclude

--include "*.jpg"
--include "*.png"
--exclude "*"

This explicitly includes only JPG and PNG files. The --exclude "*" at the end catches everything else.

The --filter Flag

The --filter flag gives you both include and exclude in one rule:

--filter "+ *.pdf"
--filter "+ *.docx"
--filter "- *"

The + prefix means include, - means exclude. This is equivalent to separate --include and --exclude flags but more compact.

Filter-From File

For complex rule sets, put your filters in a file:

--filter-from /path/to/filters.txt

filters.txt:

# Include documents
+ *.pdf
+ *.docx
+ *.xlsx

# Include images
+ *.jpg
+ *.png

# Exclude everything else
- *

Lines starting with # are comments. This is the recommended approach for any sync job with more than 2-3 rules.

Directory Filters

Exclude a specific directory

--exclude "backup/**"

The ** means "this directory and everything inside it."

Include only a specific directory

--include "/projects/**"
--exclude "*"

This syncs only the projects folder at the root level.

Exclude directories by pattern

--exclude ".git/**"
--exclude "__pycache__/**"
--exclude "node_modules/**"

Common for developers syncing code repositories — skip version control and dependency folders.

Size Filters

Minimum file size

--min-size 1M

Skip files smaller than 1 MB. Useful for ignoring thumbnails or tiny cache files.

Maximum file size

--max-size 100M

Skip files larger than 100 MB. Useful when you want documents but not video files.

Size units

k or K — Kilobytes
M — Megabytes
G — Gigabytes

Example: --min-size 500k --max-size 2G syncs files between 500 KB and 2 GB.

Age Filters

Only recent files

--max-age 7d

Sync only files modified in the last 7 days. Ideal for incremental backups of active projects.

Only older files

--min-age 30d

Sync only files that haven't changed in 30 days. Useful for archiving stale data.

Age units

ms — Milliseconds
s — Seconds
m — Minutes
h — Hours
d — Days
w — Weeks
M — Months
y — Years

Practical Examples

Example 1: Backup only documents

Sync PDFs, Word docs, and spreadsheets from Google Drive to Backblaze B2:

--include "*.pdf"
--include "*.docx"
--include "*.xlsx"
--include "*.pptx"
--exclude "*"

Example 2: Skip large video files

Sync everything except video files over 500 MB:

--exclude "*.mp4"
--exclude "*.mov"
--exclude "*.avi"
--exclude "*.mkv"

Or use size filtering: --max-size 500M

Example 3: Developer project sync

Sync a code project without dependencies and build artifacts:

--exclude "node_modules/**"
--exclude ".git/**"
--exclude "__pycache__/**"
--exclude "dist/**"
--exclude "build/**"
--exclude "*.pyc"

Example 4: Archive files older than 90 days

Move old files from Google Drive to S3 Glacier:

--min-age 90d

Example 5: Photo backup (skip RAW, keep JPEG)

--include "*.jpg"
--include "*.jpeg"
--include "*.png"
--include "*.heic"
--exclude "*.cr2"
--exclude "*.nef"
--exclude "*.arw"
--exclude "*"

Using Filters in RcloneView

When creating a sync or copy job in RcloneView, you can add filter rules in the job configuration. These are passed directly to rclone:

Configure filter rules in RcloneView jobs

Dry run to verify

Always use dry run first when testing new filter rules. This shows you exactly which files would be included or excluded without actually transferring anything.

Folder Comparison with filters

Use Folder Comparison to see the state of your source and destination. Combined with filters, this helps you understand exactly what will be synced.

Folder comparison to verify filter results

Common Mistakes

Forgetting the trailing `**` for directories

# Wrong — only excludes a FILE named "logs"
--exclude "logs"

# Right — excludes the logs DIRECTORY and everything in it
--exclude "logs/**"

Including without excluding the rest

# This includes PDFs but doesn't exclude anything else
--include "*.pdf"

# This works — include already implies "exclude everything else"
# But only when using --include alone

Order matters

# This excludes everything, then tries to include (too late!)
--exclude "*"
--include "*.pdf"

# This works — include first, then exclude the rest
--include "*.pdf"
--exclude "*"