MacOS – How to Skype track downloaded file on the file system

findermacosskype

Using Skype 7.37 on OS X El Capitan, observing this highly unusual behaviour:

  1. I receive a photo in a Skype chat.
  2. I click "Reveal in Finder", Skype places the photo in my Downloads folder as it is configured to do.
  3. I move the file to eg. Dropbox.
  4. I click "Reveal in Finder" again – Skype correctly opens the Dropbox folder!
  5. I move the file again to eg. Desktop and rename it by appending "test" or such.
  6. I click "Reveal in Finder" again – Skype correctly opens Desktop!!!

In steps 4 and 6 I was totally expecting Skype to download the photo again and store it into Downloads.

Can anyone else replicate this behaviour? How is Skype able to do this?

Best Answer

I don't use Skype but I suspect the fact it came from Skype is stored in one of two places. To find out, copy a Skype download to your Home directory and start Terminal. If your file is called, say, photo.jpg, you would run:

mdls photo.jpg

to list the metadata and something in there will refer to Skype or its bundle identifier.

Alternatively, run:

xattr -l photo.jpg

and see if Skype is listed in its WhereFrom attribute.

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