Find files modified today, using command line (bash)

Question

As we all know, despite being named "Finder", the Finder is virtually useless at finding files.

In Mac OS X 10.6 (or any version), how can I use the command line (bash in Terminal) to find files modified today?

Scot · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-16 05:19:23Z

22

There are several ways to do this in bash from the terminal - depending on exactly what you want to find:

Find files modified in the last 24 hours

find / -mtime -1 -print

Find files modified today (likely what you want)

find / -newerct 'yesterday' -print

or, using Spotlight

mdfind date:today

This can also be done from the GUI with Spotlight.

Open Spotlight (option-command space by default).
Add a criteria to search for, by hitting the Plus sign near the top right of the Spotlight window.
Change the criteria to "Last modified date" is "today."

answered Jan 16, 2014 at 5:19

Scot

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5

Note that you don't need the -print at the end since find defaults to it and in most cases you want to replace the / with either . to find down from the current directory or ~ to find in your home directory rather than the top of the tree.
– Tony Williams
Jan 16, 2014 at 5:46
possible to check files modifies in last 5 minutes or last 2 hours?
– Ewoks
Jul 12, 2017 at 8:11
1

@Ewoks Yes, mtime defaults to using days, but if you specify units, can find modifications from last n seconds, minutes, hours, or weeks, e.g.: find . -mtime -5m -or- find . -mtime -2h
– Scot
Aug 25, 2017 at 22:39
1

Just to help others -Btime is creation time, -atime is access time, -ctime is change of file status (aka "date added"), -mtime is modified time
– Matt Sephton
Jan 28, 2018 at 11:54

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