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Loss of reliable “Date Modified” behavior is destroying file discovery and productivity

I need to raise a serious productivity issue that has fundamentally broken how I work in Dropbox.

For years, my workflow depended on being able to sort and find files reliably by Date Modified. This is not a “nice to have” feature, it is essential for meeting deadlines. I work across many active projects and frequently need to locate the most recently edited file quickly.

Since Dropbox began forcing background indexing / “modifying” files, the Date Modified field has effectively become meaningless. Files that I have not touched are suddenly marked as modified, while files I actually worked on recently are buried or out of order. What used to take seconds now takes hours.

This has had very real consequences:

I can no longer trust sorting by Date Modified
I waste huge amounts of time opening files just to verify which version is current
My ability to meet deadlines has been severely impacted
My productivity has dropped dramatically

To be clear:
This is not user error, not a learning curve issue, and not a preference change. This is a regression in core file-management behavior.

If Dropbox needs to index files internally, that process should not overwrite or redefine the user-visible “Date Modified” metadata. That breaks established OS-level workflows and makes Dropbox actively hostile to professional use.

At minimum, Dropbox needs to provide one of the following:

A way to preserve true file modification dates
A separate, clearly labeled field for “Last Indexed” or “Dropbox Activity”
Or an option to disable indexing behaviors that rewrite modified timestamps

Right now, Dropbox is making it harder, not easier, to find my own work. I am genuinely questioning whether I can continue using it for professional projects if this behavior remains.

I would really appreciate a response from Dropbox staff acknowledging this issue and explaining whether a fix or workaround is planned.

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Hannah

Thanks for taking the time to post to our Community, @pentagramwookie.

First of all, I wanted to say that I understand where you're coming from here.

We really appreciate that you took the time to write your thoughts on the "date modified" sorting option.

I'll make sure your feedback and your comments get passed along to the people that need to hear them.

Now, just to clarify, are you only seeing this behavior on the desktop app (local Dropbox folder) or the website as well?

Let me know!

intrepidcookie

I’m running into the exact same problem, and it’s honestly shocking that this is even up for debate.

The whole point of “Date modified” is to reflect when a file was actually edited, so you can quickly find the current version across many folders. Once Dropbox’s own background activity starts arbitrarily rewriting that field, it doesn’t matter whether it happens on desktop or web—the timeline is corrupted everywhere.

It means:

“Date modified” can no longer be trusted as a source of truth
Extra time is wasted opening multiple files just to see which one is current
Deadlines and version control become riskier for zero user benefit

If Dropbox wants to run indexing, AI, or any other processing in the background, that’s fine—but it should have its own clearly labeled timestamp. Silently hijacking core file metadata that operating systems and professionals have relied on for decades sends a pretty simple message: if you need reliable file timelines, you might need to start planning around Dropbox, not with it.

I don’t know why they refuse to take care of this, especially when people have been reporting it for years; at this point it almost feels like any of the usual reasons: it doesn’t show up in the right dashboard, it’s risky to admit the design is fundamentally flawed, or it simply doesn’t rank next to shinier roadmap items like AI and “engagement” features.

Whatever the internal justification is, the external message is pretty clear: breaking a core piece of file metadata that professionals rely on daily is apparently an acceptable trade‑off.

This isn’t an isolated complaint. There are years of posts about Dropbox showing wrong modified timestamps on uploads, migrations, and sync clients, plus entire workflows (Zettelkasten, backup tools, rsync‑style mirroring) getting wrecked because Dropbox doesn’t preserve or expose reliable modified dates.

At some point it stops looking like an edge case and starts looking like a conscious decision: new “experiences” matter more than making sure basic file metadata remains trustworthy for people who actually organize their work by time.

Walter

Hey @intrepidcookie - thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on this with us.

I've made an internal note of your feedback on this and you can let us know if you have anything else to add.

Cheers!