How can I order all files and directories by last access date?

Question

How can I sort all files and directories on my harddrive in order of most recent access?

Access by myself or by a program.

I would like to see the old stuff I have lying around that just doesn't get used.

What do you mean by "sort"? Do you want to change sort order in Finder, or when running ls in Terminal, or something else? — nohillside, Dec 17 '21 at 06:34
@nohillside I just want to see which parts of my file system are most unused — minseong, Dec 17 '21 at 12:09
CleanMyMac X is good for this type of search, or look at things by size, maybe - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5353/how-can-i-figure-out-whats-slowly-eating-my-hd-space — Tetsujin, Dec 17 '21 at 12:24

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 17 '21 at 09:55

3

Open a new finder window with CMD+n. If it doesn't default to "Recents" - choose it. Hit the cog, and choose "Show Search Criteria".

This takes you to a "Raw query" (other views will also do the same - I just use this as it's not grouped), choose to view by "list";

This enables the column headings, which you can now use to affect the sorting order. Just click on "Date Last Opened" until it sorts by oldest first;

And ... that's it! Obviously, it won't care about files you've never opened but that's fine. TBH, I use CleanMyMac for this type of thing, as it builds an index so you can sort by various attributes (e.g. file size is a good one) very easily.

answered Dec 17 '21 at 09:55

Pobtastic

131

Recents seems to only show my Documents? I can't see any system or application files in it – minseong Dec 17 '21 at 12:07
It's because you don't as a user "open" these files, they list as "--" for the last opened date, which you'll see if you change the raw query string to; (kMDItemFSName=".") – Pobtastic Dec 17 '21 at 13:33
But I would like to find out about last "access by myself or by a program" – minseong Dec 17 '21 at 15:01
That’s the change to “all files” which I mentioned in my previous post above. – Pobtastic Dec 18 '21 at 17:02
I do not see where you mentioned all files previously. – minseong Dec 18 '21 at 17:14
Hmmm maybe it's implied as I've replied to you - but "all files" is when you change the raw query string to; (kMDItemFSName=".") – Pobtastic Dec 19 '21 at 16:47

How can I order all files and directories by last access date?

1 Answers1