Losing the original "Edited" date of folders on iCloud Drive
So after much reluctancy and careful consideration, I made the move to using iCloud Drive for my Desktop & Documents folders. The initial surprise: "Wow, that half a TB for almost half a million files sure takes a long while to digest". But after that, it works.
Until... you start searching for certain files and folders and notice the havoc and harm that has been done to the structure of your life's and work's archive: all original and correct "Edited" dates of folders are set to the date and time of transition ! Sorting a list-view by date makes no sense anymore.
It will take me many years to gradually overcome this unexpected loss of meta-data.
Some technically inclined users tried using brute force Terminal commands on their local folders. They used the date of the newest "Added" or "Edited" file within a folder to time-stamp the folder with a more helpful "Edited" date. But as this action is actually an edit, the folder is being synced up to iCloud, marking it with the current date again, trickling back to the local folder.
However, this kind of repair on iCloud server-side would help to let "Sort by date" become useful again. It could be offered and performed as a relatively quick modal action upon request, since it only needs to retrieve and write meta-data twice (online and locally). There's no need to up- or download any actual files.
MacBook Pro 16″