File Flags and the Finder
Forcing a Finder Update
Why the Finder sometimes keeps showing old dates and attributes after a change, what the Force Finder update setting and action do, and when to switch the setting off for very large batches.
The Finder keeps much of its information about the files that it displays in a fast-access cache thus allowing it to “feel quicker” because it no longer needs to access the hard disk each time it displays a file.
Unfortunately the Finder is not always very good at picking up changes on the file system and consequently can on occasion show “old” or “stale” information. In other words, the files have changed but the Finder still displays the old information.
The type of information that is cached by the Finder includes file names, modification and creation dates, icons, etc.
Over time the Finder has become much more robust in detecting and displaying changes quickly, but it’s still far from perfect.
It can be very confusing when the Finder information and the actual file system are out of sync. This can happen quite a lot when using A Better Finder Attributes because you explicitly change file information that is susceptible to this problem.
This is why, by default, A Better Finder Attributes asks the Finder to re-read every file it has changed. The Force Finder update after operation is complete checkbox in Settings controls this; keep it on in normal use.
When processing very large numbers of files, however, this can become quite time-intensive and you may wish to switch the setting off for the duration of such operations.
The Force the Finder to update its information on the file(s) action does the same thing on demand: drop the files whose Finder information looks stale, and perform the action. It changes nothing in the files themselves.