Allow to sort on 'Data Accessed' (atime) in Nautilus IconView

[omair]

Files copied to a populated directory are automatically sorted making it extremely difficult to figure out what existing files were replaced and what files are new in the directory. In Windows, for example, the copy command replaces existing files in the same position while new files are added to the bottom of the list making it simple to figure out which files have been newly added to the directory.

[pranith (bobby-prani)]

I am not sure what exactly you are referring to. If you sort your icons based on modification date, the icons will be rearranged as you said, new files will be at the bottom. If you have your sort preference based on name, then this is the right behaviour.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

marking as incomplete, pending on the answers to comment 1.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

The modification date of the original file is preserved when you move or copy it, so sorting by it doesn't help. But you can get the desired result by sorting on 'date accessed' (which is not shown by default - you have to enable it with Edit / Preferences / List Columns).

Personally, I prefer nautilus' current behaviour. I have always assumed that adding the files to the bottom of the folder is just Windows 'laziness'.

[omair (omair-hafiz)]

I confirm Rocko's statement - could this be a papercut? - enabling a default user-defined sort order other than those listed on the right-click?

[omair (omair-hafiz)]

...adding to my last comment - if users are using anything other than list views, it is not immediately intuitive how one can sort a list of files in any other way other than what is displayed on the right-click.

[Vish (vish)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream. Thanks in advance!

[Vish (vish)]

@Omar: Once you have reported upstream , Kindly add it to the bug watch.
Launchpad has the ability to watch lots of upstream bug trackers and this can be done by following the procedure documented at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Watches.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Newly copied or moved files are already selected, but I don't think it's worth to break the sorting for this issue.
However, things could be made easier on some systems by allowing to sort on 'Data Accessed' (atime). But keep in mind that on a lot of systems atime is unreliable since it's not always updated -- it is I/O-intensive to do so since it requires a write on every single read.

I'm requested upstream to allow files to be sorted on atime in both ListView and IconView. If you would like another way of solving this issue, please create and idea at Ubuntu Brainstorm <http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/> or send a mail to the <email address hidden> mailist.
Thanks everyone!

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Correction: it is already supported to sort on atime in ListViews, just add the column with View->Visible Columns and you can sort on it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

upstream closed the bug with that comment

"Yeah we had this recently actually but it turns out for various reasons that
the accessed time is completely bogus and doesn't get updated. We removed the
ability to sort by this field. I think this is unfortunate."