'no date' issue in OSX

Any ideas on this issue?

I explained the issue three years ago. Nothing has changed.

For whatever reason, the metadata is not getting written for the files that end up in No Date.

Some apps will write the metadata when they create the file, others still don't. Some of Apple's own apps don't write the metadata.

If you arrange by Date Modified (which is file system data that must be written) instead of Date Last Opened or Date Added, then it should display the files within the Today section.

I've never heard of this issue. Do you have any screenshots or links to other discussions?

I am having the same issue and it's driving me crazy. I have resorted to keeping the little bar on my downloads open at the bottom and searching for the name in finder to find my stuff. I am having to search for pretty much everything I download using the search window at the top of finder. Very frustrating. Doesn't matter if I choose "date added", "date modified", "date created"... everything shows up in NO DATE and in no particular order. This has been going on for several months now. Love to know of a solution...

In OSX terminal running ls -l <FullFileNameWithPath> should show you a date, but Spotlight index does not have it yet.

Also, check System Preference -> Spotlight.

ls -l iTunes.app/

total 0

drwxr-xr-x 9 root wheel 306 Sep 11 16:08 Contents

OK, I'm pretty savvy but I have no idea what you just said. 😉 Do you think this will be fixed with the new OS?

In OSX Terminal, please triple click the following line and paste and press enter...

sudo find / -name 7450.gif -print -exec ls -l {} \;

and paste the output as a reply.

Finder uses Spotlight (an index that OS X build for files that you create). The 'indexing' process can be a 'lazy' one, depending on other activity on your machine, which means this 'index' may not have a date yet, but may just have a name.

find: /dev/fd/3: Not a directory

find: /dev/fd/4: Not a directory

ooops... I think I was supposed to put MY FILE name in there. LOL!

/.MobileBackups/Computer/2014-09-14-101302/Volume/Users/Linda/Pictures/fb pictures/Birthday/hb6.jpg

-rw-r--r--@ 1 root staff 0 Sep 14 11:04 /.MobileBackups/Computer/2014-09-14-101302/Volume/Users/Linda/Pictures/fb pictures/Birthday/hb6.jpg

find: /dev/fd/3: Not a directory

find: /dev/fd/4: Not a directory

/Users/Linda/Pictures/fb pictures/Birthday/hb6.jpg

-rw-r-----@ 1 Linda staff 110716 Sep 14 10:28 /Users/Linda/Pictures/fb pictures/Birthday/hb6.jpg

Date Added is metadata, not file system data, so it must be populated by the OS and indexed by Spotlight. One of the two processes isn’t happening.

I can’t remember where I first saw it, but I filed a bug report on it back then. It was as far back as Pre-release Mountain Lion, or earlier. I have never heard anything about it since.

I initially saw it with Screen Shots I was grabbing to post on these forums.

There are several of these threads popping up lately and I can’t remember seeing the problem in a while. However, I’m not sure I was using Date Added, so I have started trying to track it again.

My guess is that Spotlight isn’t indexing the files immediately like it should. I don’t know what would cause that.

If you notice there are recent dates on individual files in the filesystem, but Spotlight is not reflecting it.

You can ignore the '/dev/fd' errors.

Everything is checked in Spotlight preferences. Interestingly enough, everything is now showing up with a date when I look. I just downloaded something to check it and it immediately went to the proper date. Do you think running the command in TERMINAL fixed it? I then downloaded several pictures from the internet and each one is now showing with a date. No lag. Could it be that easy?

The terminal command access the filesystem rather than the index. If you do see it happen again, try the command, but it is unlikely to help Spotlight indexing. The Find command does force the file system cache to be accessed, which may cause Spotlight to update.

This is my guess, but only Apple can provide an explanation. 😉