.pages and .numbers filename extensions cannot be hidden since macOS 15.4

Hi Bruno, I tried your suggestion of hiding the extension on one device and it fixing it on both, but that doesn't work for me. If I hide it on my MacBook or Mac mini, it will sync the hide across both devices, but as soon as I re-save the file on either device, the extension will re-appear.

I spoke to support again today, and they had me submit a video screen capture of the issue and confirmed it had been supported to engineering.

Luis:

in my case, this happens only with files stored in folders located on Desktop or in Documents, and both of them are sync'ed on iCloud

IAmSkippermark:

it does not work every time for me, but so far, it did 3 times out of 4. My last success was today with a ".page" document. Yesterday, I had to repeat the hide extension on the second Mac before it decided to work.

I also have ".webloc" extensions appearing sometimes, when I save web page links from Safari. The only trick I found to prevent it, is to wait until the extension appears and disappears by itself, before I click on the icon generated (like selecting, or moving it). It may take a couple of seconds, but it works most of the time.

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all have their own product development teams. Probably silos… 🤓. With 2 - 3 lines of Swift code, each application can check if the existing document's extension is hidden and honor that on a save, or use an extension on newly created files.

If Numbers is not doing that, you can send direct feedback to the Numbers product team from the Numbers application menu and request that extension checking feature.

I agree. I think it might also be a saving to iCloud issue, as I have had .pdf extensions show up as well, that HAD NOT previously.

I've had similar behavior for .pages and others, but I've been working predominantly in pages since this issue has started to occur and it's been happening to every single one of my documents now. This is a NEW issue.

I save everything via iCloud and not locally.

I've done all the checks and unchecks, all the things listed in this thread, and restarted computer, etc

and upon auto-save, it changes the file name back to one with an extension.

Every time.

Hopefully, there will be some bug fixing soon and another update :)

I did some more tests. First, I restarted both of my Macs. Then I added some more file types to my tests (Keynote, Picture ".heic", ".jpg", ".txt" saved with third party BBEdit (a text editor), Microsoft Word ".docx").

On my i9 iMac, ".numbers" has shown its file extension in both locations (Desktop and Documents). Both Pages and ".png" remained immune every time, as seem to be Keynote and TextEdit, so far. All of the other 6 file extensions have unmasked after some time.

On my MacBook Pro, the results are about the same. The difference is that the Keynote file has shown its file extension on the Desktop, and the BBEdit ".txt" text file has not on my second trial.

I would conclude this experiment by saying that there is some improvement, but there is still a problem somewhere to fix. I guess that Apple has corrected the way their applications save their documents to avoid the issue, but this issue appeared in the first place everywhere at the same time, even with non Apple application, so it is should not be related to Apple applications. I hope that people at Apple are aware of that and someone is still working to find the real cause.

IAmSkippermark:

My Pages file was previously created file, and it has remained unaffected from the time I did my macOS update yesterday (right after lunch time), and up to now. I did a dozen of trials on it, during about 30 hours. Just now, it decided to show its file extension. My Keynote file was a new file, created yesterday afternoon. It also just showed its file extension a few minutes ago.

As you did, I decided to create a new Numbers file, to see what it does. After 20 minutes, the file extension remains masked. Note that many of my other test files were also new files (Word ".docx", BBEdit ".txt", ".pdf", ".jpg").

Another surprise for me today. I have several files that were not modified during the last day, and had their file extension masked, but the Finder suddenly decided to unmask their file extensions. Files modified before the month of may (before update 15.4.1, I assume) seem unaffected and their file extension remain masked.

For example, I have a ".numbers" document that was modified 4 days ago, and still had its file extension masked yesterday night, but the file extension is unmasked today, without being modified in the mean time.

Note: for information, the Numbers file I created yesterday night also shows now its file extension.

I spoke with level 2 Apple support again a couple weeks ago, and the person said the original issue was elevated to the wrong team. It was elevated to the "iWorks" team and not the Mac OS/iCloud team, so he basically started the report from scratch. He had me do some things and then said he'd contact me in a couple days after engineering told him what they needed, but he never got back to me. I gave it a few days and ended up calling, and the new advisor saw all the notes from engineering and what they needed, and he took over the case at that point, and we ran a ton of diagnostics that got saved to a file and ultimately uploaded to the Apple support site. I also included a video showing Finder and Numbers open side by side and the extension reappearing without me doing anything after about 15 seconds of saving a document.

He said engineering would need 2-3 days to analyze the info, but we gave them a couple extra days because of the holiday and have a call scheduled. I'll update once I hear back.

I have been experiencing this exact behavior as well on macOS 15.5 and posted a similar issue to the community.  I can change the behavior temporarily using the File >> Get Info >> Hide Extension setting, but it reverts back to adding the full filename extension at some later time.  Unfortunately I don't have any new suggestions to add to what’s already been discussed on this thread, but I wanted to attach my name to receive new updates.  I certainly appreciate all the time and effort that many of the community have contributed to researching and diagnosing this issue.

Thanks Bruno,

Previously to using Get Info, I was deleting the extension by clicking into the filename, then clicking to the end of the entire filename+extension and backspace/deleting the extension portion. Your suggestion is probably a faster, easier way to accomplish the same thing - I'll give it a try.

Ken

Same for me. Issue still persists. I reached out to Apple again using my original case number, and they said they're aware of the problem but don't have a timeline fix. Maybe MacOS 26 will fix it... hoping, fingers crossed, Apple.

I was as well but apparently no luck. I still have my original case number when I contacted support and they completely picked apart my computer with diagnostics logs to send to the engineers and was thinking about contacting them again, but last time I called they said the engineers were fully aware of the problem but gave no timeline of when, or if, it would be fixed.

EtreCheck is a great free troubleshooting app to eliminanate playing 20 questions,

https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Can you please clarify: is this issue only appearing in connection with iCloud, i.e., no problems with files stored locally?

It sounds like there might be a bug with the Finder display settings for Pages and Numbers files in macOS 15.4. You could try reporting this issue to Apple Support so they can investigate further.