Ignoring Files

This document provides an overview of the Gemini Ignore (.geminiignore) feature of the Gemini CLI.

The Gemini CLI includes the ability to automatically ignore files, similar to .gitignore (used by Git) and .aiexclude (used by Gemini Code Assist). Adding paths to your .geminiignore file will exclude them from tools that support this feature, although they will still be visible to other services (such as Git).

How it works

When you add a path to your .geminiignore file, tools that respect this file will exclude matching files and directories from their operations. For example, when you use the read_many_files command, any paths in your .geminiignore file will be automatically excluded.

For the most part, .geminiignore follows the conventions of .gitignore files:

• Blank lines and lines starting with # are ignored.
• Standard glob patterns are supported (such as *, ?, and []).
• Putting a / at the end will only match directories.
• Putting a / at the beginning anchors the path relative to the .geminiignore file.
• ! negates a pattern.

You can update your .geminiignore file at any time. To apply the changes, you must restart your Gemini CLI session.

How to use .geminiignore

To enable .geminiignore:

1. Create a file named .geminiignore in the root of your project directory.

To add a file or directory to .geminiignore:

1. Open your .geminiignore file.
2. Add the path or file you want to ignore, for example: /archive/ or apikeys.txt.

.geminiignore examples

You can use .geminiignore to ignore directories and files:

# Exclude your /packages/ directory and all subdirectories
/packages/

# Exclude your apikeys.txt file
apikeys.txt

You can use wildcards in your .geminiignore file with *:

# Exclude all .md files
*.md

Finally, you can exclude files and directories from exclusion with !:

# Exclude all .md files except README.md
*.md
!README.md

To remove paths from your .geminiignore file, delete the relevant lines.