A future version of macOS (?10.16) will check code signatures more thoroughly than at present. Here’s what to do to start preparing for that.
xattr
Xattrs are marvellous features of macOS, but unless a developer is aware of their lability and how to preserve them, they aren’t good places to store metadata of any importance.
Need to clean documents of metadata, remove versions, and zero their datestamps? Here’s the utility to help, when used wisely.
Updates to two utilities to create and edit metadata in extended attributes, which work better with Spotlight search. Now compatible with Catalina.
Is it worth entering author name, title, keywords and so on in a document’s Properties?
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.
