There are two options to specify the files and directories you want to exclude:

• From a command line, using the --exclude option.
• From a file, using the --exclude-from option.

Exclude a Specific File

To exclude a specific file, pass the relative path to the file to the --exclude option.

In the following example the file src_directory/file.txt will not be transferred:

rsync -a --exclude 'file.txt' src_directory/ dst_directory/

Exclude a Specific Directory

Excluding a specific directory is same as excluding a file, just pass the relative path to the directory to the --exclude option as shown below:

rsync -a --exclude 'dir1' src_directory/ dst_directory/

If you want to exclude the directory content but not the directory itself use dir1/* instead of dir1:

rsync -a --exclude 'dir1/*' src_directory/ dst_directory/

Exclude Multiple Files or Directories

To exclude multiple files or directories simply specify multiple --exclude options:

rsync -a --exclude 'file1.txt' --exclude 'dir1/*' --exclude 'dir2' src_directory/ dst_directory/

If you prefer to use a single --exclude option you can list the files and directories you want to exclude in curly braces {} separated by a comma as shown below:

rsync -a --exclude={'file1.txt','dir1/*','dir2'} src_directory/ dst_directory/

If the number of the files and/or directories you want to exclude is large, instead of using multiple --exclude options you can specify the files and directories you want to exclude in a file and pass the file to the --exclude-from option.

The command below does exactly the same as the one above:

rsync -a --exclude-from='exclude-file.txt' src_directory/ dst_directory/

file1.txtdir1/*dir2

Exclude Multiple Files or Directories Based on a Pattern

With rsync you can also exclude files and directories based on a pattern that matches the file or directory name.

For example, to exclude all .jpg files you would run:

rsync -a --exclude '*.jpg*' src_directory/ dst_directory/

It is little trickier to exclude all other files and directories except those that match a certain pattern. Let’s say you want to exclude all other files and directories except the files ending with .jpg.

One option is to use the following command:

rsync -a -m --include='*.jpg' --include='*/' --exclude='*' src_directory/ dst_directory/

When using multiple include/exclude option, the first matching rule applies.

• --include='*.jpg' - First we are including all .jpg files.
• --include='*/' - Then we are including all directories inside the in src_directory directory. Without this rsync will only copy *.jpg files in the top level directory.
• -m - Removes the empty directories.

Another option would be to pipe the output of the find command to rsync:

find src_directory/ -name "*.jpg" -printf %P\\0\\n | rsync -a --files-from=- src_directory/ dst_directory/

• -printf %P\\0\\n - will remove the src_directory/ from the file path.
• --files-from=- - means include only the files from the standard input (files passed from the find command).