Comments on: How to change a file’s last modified and creation dates on Mac OS X

By: liz

liz — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:52:03 +0000

hey i tried to change the creation time but it wouldn’t let me saying it was illegal or something. can you help me??

By: Rats

Rats — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:58:35 +0000

Thanks for the tut. If you get the out of range/ illegal error. Makes sure to hit spacebar before you drag the desired file into terminal

By: Dirk

Dirk — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:59:08 +0000

the -t flag doesn’t change the creation time. It changes the access and modification times to the specified time. Cf. man touch.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:51:04 +0000

Thank you. This was very helpful for a series of video files I made that had the wrong date after the internal date/time reset on my camcorder.

By: Bertil

Bertil — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:33:32 +0000

Thanks a lot. But a date could not be less than Year 1904. Tried to change my old scanned pics from 1800. Why? I there a limit?
Thank You
Bertil from Sweden

By: David

David — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:00:54 +0000

I am getting a “-bash -mt: command not found” message when I try this. Any help? Thanks!

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:10:47 +0000

is there any way to change the last opened?

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:24:44 +0000

Fix for changing creation date:

I had some files with creation date 2068, jan. 19th. That is the highest possible date.

I ended up
1) copying the file to a different drive
2) delete original (don’t skip this step)
3) copy the file back to original drive

Viola – New creation date

PS Still a very informative post

By: Sandro

Sandro — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:54:36 +0000

Hi Danilo,

Thanks for the tip, very useful (and well explained too)!!

Cheers

By: peter

peter — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:33:49 +0000

Thanks! KEY issue is that a space is required before drag and dropping (file name) Forgot all the programming rules. Sorry i missed THE post: Steve IS ‘DE MAN’za
THANKS again!!!