The Recents Folder in the Finder

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Level 1

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The Recents Folder in the Finder

Three days ago, I wanted to edit a file that I had created in the same week. The fastest way to find it should be to go to the Recents folder in the Finder. The newest files are always at the top.

When I clicked on the Recents icon in the sidebar, the Finder showed no files. I clicked on a different icon, and all the files that should have been in it were actually in it.

I have not found anything to show how the Recents folder became empty. My work is still on the HD. I miss the convenience of having access to it in the Recents folder.

Has anyone else had this problem?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.3

Posted on May 21, 2021 10:36 PM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

112,920 points

May 22, 2021 5:08 AM in response to Eastrade

Recents is created using a Spotlight search. If it suddenly went empty, I would suspect your Spotlight index is corrupt.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716

Not really related to your problem, depending on what app was used to create the file, it may not show up in Recents until you open it from the Finder. Recents requires specific Metadata to be written and many apps do not write that on creation.

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Answer 2

Eastrade Author

Level 1

19 points

May 22, 2021 5:32 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks for your response. The link was interesting and raised a question for me. Recents is completely empty. Up until this week it has displayed files from every app that I use. I have never done anything more than search with Spotlight. I upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur last month, and Spotlight worked fine.

Do you know if using the directions in the link on one app will completely restore Spotlight or if I will have to add and delete each app individually to restore Spotlight?

I appreciate knowing about the Metadata requirement. In my experience Recents has always shown me what I was looking for. Even though I know that Spotlight is more thorough than Finder when searching a HD, I still use Finder first. There are times when I know that the search criteria are correct, yet Finder returns nothing. In these cases I would go to Recents and find what I was looking for. My experience seems to be slightly different from what the support documents are telling us.

I will try using those files and find out what happens.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,920 points

May 23, 2021 2:34 PM in response to Eastrade

The Spotlight index is system-wide. It does not work per-app, but individual apps provide data importers for their own file types.

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The Recents Folder in the Finder

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