Missing/Reappearing Finder “More Info” Metadata

Sometimes my Finder’s “More Info” section of metadata goes rogue. When I notice that it’s missing—when Hazel throws an error because “where from” is empty for a downloaded file, for example—I reboot my Mac and after a while, the metadata magically reappears.

I’m running macOS Monterey 12.2.1 on a iMac (Late 2015).

See screenshots below.

Does anyone have any idea why “More Info” goes missing? It is really annoying.

Thank you for reading.

The “More Info” metadata is missing

But after a reboot and waiting less than an hour

That feels like a Spotlight issue to me. Perhaps force it to refresh by dragging your entire drive into System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy, and then deleting it again. I don’t know if you have to wait a certain amount of time, close and reopen System Preferences, or restart while it’s in there to ensure that Spotlight deletes its index.

I don’t know if you have to wait a certain amount of time, close and reopen System Preferences, or restart while it’s in there to ensure that Spotlight deletes its index.

Thank you for your suggestion. I will give it a try.

According to Step 5 of this Apple Support article, I just need to “Quit System Preferences” (after adding/deleting the drive) to trigger the rebuild; there is no need for a restart.

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I’ve done a bit more research into this problem and thought I’d post what I’ve found

Apparently the Where from information that is displayed under More Info within the Finder’s Get Info window comes from an the extended attribute com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFromsdisplayed. It’s just one of many common extended attributes used by Spotlight.

Howard Oakley’s introduction to extended attributes is a good place to learn more about them.

The terminal command xattr can display a list of a file’s extended attributes as well as manipulate them but it’s hard to use. Howard’s extended attribute utilities are much better.

Now, if only I could figure out how to force Spotlight to retrieve com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFromsdisplayed so that Hazel can do my bidding. :thinking:

Now, if only I could figure out how to force Spotlight to
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFromsdisplayed so that
Hazel can do my bidding.

If you use Find (command-F) in a finder window, the first popup menu has an “Other…” item. in the search box, enter ‘where’ and it will show up and you can click in the checkbox so it stays in the list.

Does anyone know of a good GUI to manipulate xattrs? Oakley’s is good for exploration and occasional things, but it’s somewhat rudimentary. Keyboard Maestro can display them, but doesn’t seem to be able to delete them. I don’t do enough of it to want to keep looking up command line stuff.

This is a good survey of xattrs resources. Apparently there is not currently a GUI to manipulate xattrs.

I presume that ⌘F uses the same index that Hazel uses, namely the index built by Spotlight, which includes xattrs.

My problem is NOT accessing the WHERE portion of Spotlight’s index.

My problem is triggering Spotlight to build its index in the first place.