Updates to two utilities to create and edit metadata in extended attributes, which work better with Spotlight search. Now compatible with Catalina.
extended attributes
Apple’s attitude to document metadata remains ambivalent. But macOS does offer good support for extended attributes to pass through iCloud, if you know how to access it.
Does using xattr flags disrupt Spotlight indexing, and how are those flags respected using different methods of copying a file?
So how can apps and users preserve file metadata using these xattr flags? Part of the solution is straightforward, but there’s a major limitation.
For the last six years, extended attributes have had flags to determine how they’re handled when copied. Here are the details, and how this affects iCloud.
Use Finder aliases at the command line, compare extended attributes of two files, and normalise Unicode strings.
Brings a new Stripper tool to remove xattrs in bulk, extensive Help, and a code integrity check.
This utility changes quarantine flags on documents as if XProtect had checked and cleared them, so they work normally again. First beta.
Full release of Sandstrip, a utility to remove the quarantine flags attached to documents by sandboxed apps.
Second of two, here looking at quarantine of documents, what it means, how it occurs. Much more common than apps, but mysterious.
