Using --exclude with the du command

To get the total size of files in files/ excluding all sub-directories

du -ch path/to/files --exclude=path/to/files/*/*

Just adding a Mac example

du -skI "Downloads" -I "Caches" -I "Logs" -I "OneDrive" .

I do not see a way to use the -I with a path, so for example, I haven't gotten

du -skI "Downloads" -I "Caches" -I "Logs" -I "OneDrive" -I "Library/Application Support"  .

to work. May be possible, but I haven't gotten it yet.

To exclude multiple folders

du -ch --exclude={path/to/folder1,path/to_folder2/,...,}

If you have to be on macOS, you install GNU Coreutils with the following command.

brew install coreutils

Most of the commands installed by Coreutils are prefixed by g, since they have a BSD namesake preinstalled on macOS. Then you can do the following.

gdu --exclude=Microsoft /Library/Fonts/

awesome to skip the virtual file systems like so

du -hsx --exclude=/{proc,sys,dev} /*

To exclude multiple directories, just pass the --exclude flag again.

du -ch --exclude=relative/path/to/uploads --exclude other/path/to/exclude

You've almost found it :)

du -ch --exclude=./relative/path/to/uploads

Note no asterisk at the end. The asterisk means all subdirectories under "upload" should be omitted - but not the files directly in that directory.