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villeodell/List applications by date last opened.md

Last active April 7, 2022 13:46
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macOS command line: list applications by last opened date and output to csv
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List applications by date last opened.md

List macOS applications by date last opened

Make a list of your current applications along with the date you last used them.

  1. Get the relevant metadata attributes for Applications to mimic "Date last opened" in Finder using mdls
  2. Convert plist xml output to json using yq
  3. With jq
    • select just the most recent date if multiple dates
    • sort the results
    • ouput the app name and date to csv

From the terminal:

mdls -name _kMDItemPSIDPath -name kMDItemLastUsedDate -name _kMDItemContentChangeDate -plist - /Applications/* |
  yq e -p=xml -o=json |
  jq '[ .plist.array.dict[] | { app: .string | split("Applications/") | .[1], date: ( .date | if type=="array" then . else [.] end | max | split("T") | .[0] ) } ] | sort_by(.date) | reverse | .[] | [.date, .app] | @csv'
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