How to Speed up Windows Date Sorting

If you’ve ever used Windows, you’re probably no stranger to the delightful experience of sorting your files by date and then having enough time to get a cup of coffee before it has finished loading. It’s something that has annoyed many, but luckily, there is a simple and quick solution to this issue.

Windows’ Date Dilemma

Imagine this: You have a big folder with a a bunch of files—JPEGs, EXEs, PNGs and whatnot. You decide to tidy things up and hit “Sort by → Date” in your view options. Your intentions are noble, but the wait is not. It takes several minutes to complete, and you end up having to wait several minutes before the results are shown in File Explorer. So why does this happen?

The answer is Windows its definition of “Date”. It’s not what you might think. Instead of sorting by the date of creation or last changes of the files, File Explorer ends up opening all the files in your folder to extract the original date of creation from them, instead of just using their metadata. Which is what makes it take so long. So, that picture your buddy took in 2017, send to you on Discord a month ago, and you downloaded just a few seconds ago? It’s going to show up near the end of your list sorted by “Date.” Probably not what you expected!

The Fast Solution

Now, let’s talk about fixing this. Luckily, there’s an fast and easy way to fix this.

1. Right Click inside of a Folder and hover over “Sort by”
2. Click on “More…”
3. Now uncheck “Date” (as you probably wont use it anymore)
4. Scroll down and tick “Date modified” (or “Date created”, if that is what you prefer)

✨ You did it! Sorting by → Date modified will now be as fast as ever. No more wasting your time waiting for Windows to sort your files.

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