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I just upgraded from an Android 10 phone to an Android 14 phone.

In both phones, I noticed that for folder/files, there are two properties: "Modified" and "Changed"

It seems that "Modified" is analogous to the "last modified" timestamp on most filesystems. I can change "Modified" but I can't seem to change "Changed"

My use case: I put all my photos into a folder structure on my windows computer. All file modified timestamp are set to the EXIF timestamp. The folder modified timestamp is set to the newest file modified timestamp. I then use rsync to sync it to my phone. If I open Mixplorer or a Gallery, all my albums/folders are sorted nicely. (Photos can be sorted by "Date Taken" but not folders).

Well, when I upgraded to my Android 14 phone, I noticed that all the gallery apps I use and Mixplorer don't sort by "Modified". Perhaps they use "Changed"

I don't know how the API works exactly to read the folder/file properties. Whatever they are doing seems to have changed in behavior between Android 10 and 14 where Modified is no longer used and something else such as "Changed" is used. I'm guessing all the apps havent changed their code based on android version so I assume it is something in an API change.

So I'm really just looking for a solution. Can I revert this behavior? Is there a way to sync "Changed" (if that's whats really being used) to "Modified"?

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    Not sure about the behavior of apps. But "Changed" must be ctime i.e. the time when the file's metadata was last changed. And "Modified" is mtime i.e. the time when the actual file contents were last changed. ctime also changes whenever mtime changes but not the vice versa. You can set atime/mtime to any past timestamp but there's no straightforward way for ctime. It's meant to be used by the operating system. See stat.
    – Irfan Latif
    Commented May 5 at 7:31
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    With Android 11 Google changed the way how gallery apps can access images. Before 11 gallery apps had direct storage access. Afterwards gallery apps (and all other non-file-manager apps) are disallowed full file-system access (Scoped Storage). Now app can only see what is listed in the MediaStore database. That database is updated based on the actual file-system, but I don't know how it handles creation and modification dates.
    – Robert
    Commented May 5 at 12:04
  • I assume that whatever API is is used has some "modified" type property that the apps use. And perhaps there was a change at some point where it provides ctime instead of mtime. I noticed this behavior when in Mixplorer (a file manager app) and Simple Gallery. I would assume they are accessing the files through different means (file system vs media store). So it is kind of interesting
    – eng3
    Commented May 6 at 11:43

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