Tahoe Finder Missing Video Duration in Detailed Info

In the Finder you can Control click in the columns header area and add in the Duration..

.from the contextual menu drop down. It might well take time to populate, much like Size.

re: macOS 26 Tahoe

if no insight or resolve I would definitely file a bug report / submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

[Edited by Moderator]

This is either a bug in macOS Tahoe or Apple decided to change the information shown. To have Apple consider your feedback, submit it here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Here's the Get Info window of the same movie file, top is Tahoe and bottom is Sequoia.

Note that as a workaround, you can open the video in QuickTime Player and use the Inspector (Command-I or View menu > Show Movie Inspector) to view the info that used to be shown in Finder > Get Info.

neuroanatomist wrote:

The Inspector in QuickTime Player still shows the metadata. So the info is in the files as it should be, but Finder doesn’t show it. It’s a fixable issue, should Apple choose to do so. It is possible this isn’t a bug, but rather an intentional decision by Apple. Either way, more feedback likely means more chance it will be restored.

To have Apple consider your feedback, submit it here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

I ran mdls on an original mov file and a duplicate created in Finder, and I can confirm that some Spotlight metadata is not copied.

I ran diff the two outputs and items like kMDItemDurationSeconds, kMDItemPixelHeight and other metadata related to video is NOT present in the copy, but is present in the original.

Ok. I just downloaded a 5+ GB MP4. After about ten minutes, I checked both Finder Get Info, Finder Preview settings, and the command-line mdls output for the video and no duration was available. ExifTool v13.37 showed the duration.

Tested: Tahoe 26.0.1

The issue is that this wasn't a problem what so ever until this update. And it makes no sense what so ever.

It's still not a problem for me, though not having it isn't a problem for me.

I don't know what is different on my Mac. If you at some point transferred them via ExFAT, that would strip all the metadata.

See if the metadata exists. In Terminal, enter "mdls " No quotes with a space after it. Drag a file into the Terminal window and hit return.

The duration is in kMDItemDurationSecond

There is also this data:

kMDItemMediaTypes

kMDItemPhysicalSize  

kMDItemPixelHeight   

kMDItemPixelWidth    

kMDItemProfileName   

kMDItemStreamable    

kMDItemTotalBitRate  

kMDItemVideoBitRate  

Another possibility is if the files are in the cloud and not downloaded. I don't know why they can't cache the data in the index, but they don't.

The duration is in kMDItemDurationSecond

FWIW, in Tahoe, when I run the Terminal command on various mp4s, kMDItemDurationSecond is not listed.

It's possible that Apple dropped the mp4 mdimporter or it doesn't work. The files with missing metadata have been reprocessed with the new or no importer and the data has been stripped.

I just looked at both mp4s with ExifTool and they both contain metadata.

I ran mdimport on the not-showing mp4 and it didn't import anything into Apple's extended attributes.

I then ran mdimport on the mp4 that was showing metadata and it cleared the Apple metadata.

Running mdimport with debugging option turned on indicates it returned 28 attributes.

It appears the metadata importer for mp4's either doesn't work or is missing.

Duration showing on my machine [on an external drive]:

This may help: If you put the video files in a folder that contains Movie in its name,

you can add Duration in list view:

Duration shows in Column view, Gallery view & the Preview pane in a Finder window.

In Gallery view if you hover cursor over image, duration shows below frame:

Wills1971 wrote:

In my case, it's not a per-issue folder, but rather an issue of when a specific video file was last modified. All video files modified after I installed Tahoe are missing details in Finder (duration, resolution, codec, etc.)—but all the video files last modified before updating the OS still show those details.

Even stranger, changing anything about a pre-Tahoe file with visible details makes those details disappear—even just renaming it, and even after "undoing" the rename using the Edit menu or ⌘-Z (which doesn't even change the "Date Modified").

This is clearly a bug, and quite an annoying one, especially for those of us who want to search or sort by video attributes.

Thank you for this post. It seems to give a good idea of what is happening: somehow in Tahoe these files are saved without the proper metadata. So the error is not that Tahoe does not display it, but rather that said metadata fails to be written to the files as they are saved.

I confirmed this just now. Take an older file in Finder, duplicate it - bam! Metadata goes out the window.

In my case, it's not a per-issue folder, but rather an issue of when a specific video file was last modified. All video files modified after I installed Tahoe are missing details in Finder (duration, resolution, codec, etc.)—but all the video files last modified before updating the OS still show those details.

Even stranger, changing anything about a pre-Tahoe file with visible details makes those details disappear—even just renaming it, and even after "undoing" the rename using the Edit menu or ⌘-Z (which doesn't even change the "Date Modified").

This is clearly a bug, and quite an annoying one, especially for those of us who want to search or sort by video attributes.

as that would mean macOS would need Adobe services to show basic file details.

Duration is not a basic file detail. It is content-based metadata. An mp4 should be generic, but any adobe content would require a metadata importer for their files.

All of my m4v and an mp4 music video has a duration in the preview and Get Info. I would imagine whatever created those files failed to add the metadata.

I do have a single mp4 created from a pixie cam on a RPi that does not show any metadata. I don't know how it was transferred to my Mac. If I look at the metadata on the file, it just has the standard file system data, no content metadata.

FWIW. I have a number of video files on a 16GB flash drive formatted as APFS. Duration is blank on both Sequoia & Tahoe. The same files show the duration on the internal drive of my iMac Pro running Sequoia, but not on my M3 iMac running Tahoe.

You can send Apple a bug report from the feedback page.

Feedback - macOS - Apple

I just discovered this issue: M2 Ultra, Tahoe 26.0.1.

If I look at the mp4 files in Bridge, the duration and sizes are there. But they don't show up in the Finder Preview or the Get Info panel. They also do not show up if I place them in the HD>Users>me>Movies folder as suggested. What is weird is that videos made in August (before updating to Tahoe) stopped showing the data where they once did. But videos made last year DO show the data.

The Inspector in QuickTime Player still shows the metadata. So the info is in the files as it should be, but Finder doesn’t show it.

Finder does not show the embedded metadata that QuickTime Player shows. macOS uses a metadata importer to extract the embedded data and put it into the system metadata structure (extended attributes). The importer appears to be broken. I thought I already explained that earlier.

The Inspector in QuickTime Player still shows the metadata. So the info is in the files as it should be, but Finder doesn’t show it. It’s a fixable issue, should Apple choose to do so. It is possible this isn’t a bug, but rather an intentional decision by Apple. Either way, more feedback likely means more chance it will be restored.

To have Apple consider your feedback, submit it here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple