iCloud Drive changes 'Date Modified' for folders; Confounds Life, the Universe and Everything

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iCloud Drive changes 'Date Modified' for folders; Confounds Life, the Universe and Everything

Hello. I've been using MacOS since it existed, which is to say that my whole digital life is stored within the MacOS Ecosystem, including Time Machine, SuperDuper! and iCloud Drive.

iCloud Drive has introduced a really challenging change to my file structure; it updates the 'Date Modified' for folders to current times, so things like my tax records from the '80s are now at the top of my 'Sort by date' view of my Taxes folder. This extends to everything, like customer folders and projects; anything in a folder. Which I guess is to say everything.

To be clear, this only seems to affect folders, not the files inside.

I love the simplicity of turning on iCloud Drive and getting to my stuff from wherever, but...

This change in date modified for folders that have not been touched in years is a perverse and unwanted hack on my data, and it totally disrupts the way I use the Finder and think about my content. The changes imposed are then reflected in my Time Macine and daily SuperDuper! backups, so it's a fast spreading virus, and my file system is thouroughly riddled with it. There seems to be no 'Undo.'

Not only do I post this comment here to add my voice to that of others I have seen to request Apple to fix this, but I'm curious to start a discussion to see if there could be a way to undo the damage.

For Example: could some command-line wizard out there devise a script that parses the file system and uses the oldest 'Last Modified' date of files within a folder to reset the Last Modified date of the enclosing folder? It would have to start at the very 'bottom' of the file structure and work its way up, but that approach seems like it could work.

Or maybe it should only look at the files and ignore folders, so folders get the date of the newest file it holds that is not a folder. That sounds better. Or am I missing something?

Any other thoughts or ideas? Anyone else out there have this experience?

Did I do something wrong in using iCloud Drive?

Did I inadvertantly tick the box that says "Update 'Last Modified' date on all ancient folders to Today?"

Maybe it's just a problem between my desk and my chair?

Thanks in advance for any help or insight provided.

Posted on Jan 12, 2019 2:14 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 9, 2019 2:02 PM in response to Andrew Shalit

Ha ha. The joke is on me.

So I spent the last couple of days tinkering with this. And I did manage to write code to read the date-added dates, and find the most recent one, and set the surrounding folder to that date. And it works.

But guess what? If you change the modification date of a folder that is stored on your iCloud Drive, that change counts as a modification. And iCloud Drive notices that the folder has been modified, and so it synchronizes it again. And when it synchronizes it again, it changes the modification date to the current date. Sigh.

So, it doesn't actually let you fix the problem.

Now, if you decide to turn off iCloud Drive, this could be used to restore an approximation of the correct dates to the folders that were previously stored on iCloud Drive. But it doesn't let you repair the folder dates if you continue to use iCloud Drive. Oh well.

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Answer 2

Feb 6, 2019 1:05 PM in response to John Taylor

I am also having this problem. I came here hoping to find a way to stop this from happening in the future. It hadn't occurred to me to try to repair the damage that's already occurred. Now that you mention it, though, it should be possible to implement a repair utility along the lines of your suggestion.

Every Macintosh folder and file has a "Date Added" property, in addition to a Creation Date and Modification Date. You'd want to set the Modification Date of a folder to the most recent "Date Added" of any item it contains. This should actually get you back to where things belong.

I might be able to implement something that does this. I will report back.

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Answer 3

John Taylor Author

Level 1

32 points

Feb 17, 2019 2:58 AM in response to Andrew Shalit

Hi Andrew, Thank you so much for doing this. I'm really grateful.

To Apple: This seems like a real flaw. The act of synchronising data between iCloud Drive and local machies should not constitute a change, any more than syncing something to time machine should be seen as a change.

To me, this looks like a proper bug in the Finder/iCloud Drive integration.

Could somebody from Apple step up and explain why this is a feature, rather than a bug?

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iCloud Drive changes 'Date Modified' for folders; Confounds Life, the Universe and Everything

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