How Is "Recency" Defined for Recent Files in GNOME?

Desktop
1

Hello everyone,

I’m encountering a behavior in the GNOME environment related to how “recency” is defined for files, and I would like some clarification or insights.

Work scenario:

  1. I write a document in LibreOffice (ODT format) and export it to PDF.
  2. When I open a file browsing dialog (e.g., to attach a document via email) and choose “Recent” in the sidebar, the ODT file is listed, but the newly exported PDF is not.
  3. Even if I open the PDF in a PDF reader, it still doesn’t appear in the Recent list, despite having a later modification time than the ODT file.

Expected behavior:
I would expect the exported PDF to be listed in the Recent files, as it was recently modified, which would make it easier to access.

Workaround:
I found a workaround by using a script in Nautilus Scripts that “touches” the PDF file to update its access time ($ touch ). After doing this, the PDF appears in the Recent files.

However, this workaround feels cumbersome and unneccessary, and I wonder if there’s a more user-friendly way to ensure exported files like PDFs appear in the Recent list automatically.

Questions:

  1. How does GNOME define “recency” for files?
  2. Are there specific actions (e.g., opening, editing, or exporting) that trigger a file being added to the Recent list?
  3. Could this be considered a bug or a limitation in how Recent files are handled, particularly with exported documents?

Any insights or suggestions would be appreciated!

Thank you

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2

there is tracker for search and there is settings for old policy(default 30 days if in trash) so maybe something similar. And there is always possibility to make own customed provider to provide own paths in GNOME menu search bar(made even in JS as described in gjs.guide) so maybe something is broken in tracker or some cache policy needs to be updated, don’t know because “probably” tracker is fired after some time “maybe”…

or it is some app requirement problem…

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3

Neither tracker nor search providers are related to this. The recent view is based on desktop-bookmark-spec

If a file is missing from it, that usually means that the application modifying it is not updating the recently-used.xbel file mentioned in that spec.

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