There are certain files created by particular editors, IDEs, operating systems, etc., that do not belong in a repository. But adding system-specific files to the repo's .gitignore is considered a poor practice. This file should only exclude files and directories that are a part of the package that should not be versioned (such as the node_modules directory) as well as files that are generated (and regenerated) as artifacts of a build process.
All other files should be in your own global gitignore file. Create a file called .gitignore in your home directory and add anything you want to ignore. You then need to tell git where your global gitignore file is.
git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore
git config --global core.excludesfile %USERPROFILE%\.gitignore