Files grouping

[svandragt]

The inconsistent format modification dates are shown in Files make it hard to identify if the most recently modified file was modified recently. If we could group results so it shows by last day, last week, last month, older then it would be more obvious.

[jeremypw]

Could you expand a little on how the modification dates are inconsistent? Grouping could be useful but not supported by the currently used widget so not easily implemented atm. How could formatting the dates be improved? You may not be aware that you can change the formatting of the dates by changing the setting io/elementary/files/preferences/date-format. The default is default but it can be changed to locale or iso using dconf or the commandline. With the non default settings all dates have the same format. Would it help a significant number of people to expose this setting in the appmenu?

[svandragt]

1. On the default/informal the time is only shown for the last week, I guess this is the main problem, if I need to find a screenshot taken two weeks week but it was on Monday morning, i'll need a calendar. This seems to be the best for recent file browsing.

Smaller concerns, as the sorting option is only exposed in Pantheon Tweaks or dconf:

3. On iso the timestamp is consistent but the formatting isn't aligned because the font is proportionally spaced, also the name of the day is handy to have but of course is missing. This seems to be the best for non-recent file browsing.
4. on locale the timezone differs between files, is the sorting in files timezone aware, why does the user have to think about timezones, that's not super friendly. Not sure who would prefer this honestly.

I switched back from ISO to default which gives me the name of the day and times for the last week. 👍

[jeremypw]

On the default/informal the time is only shown for the last week, I guess this is the main problem, if I need to find a screenshot taken two weeks week but it was on Monday morning, i'll need a calendar.

So would you suggest showing the day of the week for older dates?

[jeremypw]

If an ideal informal date/time format can be arrived at we can consider implementing that.