Sorting by modified when using Remotely Save across devices - not working as expected

Help
1

I’ve tried various searches (here and broader) but haven’t found a good solution - apologies if I’ve overlooked one…

I migrated from Evernote → Joplin and then to Obsidian with a pretty small library of notes (~1800 in 4 main “folders” with about 700 tags).

I’m using them on my Windows PC, Android phone and Android tablet. Syncing to an S3 bucket using Remotely Save.

Problem: My default sort is last-modified first. However, this is using the actual file’s modified date - which is changed during Remotely Save synchronization - NOT a modified metadata property in the file.

Ideal solution: Any time I change a file in Obsidian on any device it would update a date modified metadata property. When the files are synced the file modified date is ignored when sorting and the modified metadata property is used.

I was hoping once I got the initial sync across devices done I could then manually go update the most recent notes (looking at my old Joplin), it would sync, and then only the new/modified ones would be synced with updated file modified dates. But, this doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’ve checked a few other plugins but haven’t found a good solution across devices w/ syncing.

Any tips or recommendations on how you are sorting by date modified (and syncing across devices) would be appreciated!

Thanks so much!
JohnB

2

This is a common problem when syncing: file system stamps are brought up to date, regardless of when you last manually edited your files.

AlanG’s plugin is a popular one to automatically update date modified stamps when writing into a note:

There is currently no way to search in Obsidian core Search plugin by New → Old based on custom date properties.

I have used Dataview in the past and never really got into Bases but now the Bases core plugin can be used to filter for recent files. Someone will help you with that if you open a new post in Help for that.

Bonus tips if you could also filter for filenames or even file content (currently not possible I think) based on the output you get for date modified sort.

3

Thank you for this - I’ll go deeper into this plugin - I had tried it with a custom search plugin but didn’t get it working. Good reminder - thank you!

I’ve been using AI tools to improve my tags and will likely add more metadata. Ideally those wouldn’t change the modified date property. So, for me, it all comes down to finding a cross-platform plugin that uses the modified date property.

Thanks again