when I add an image file to a note in Joplin, there is no way to see the timestamp of the file.
Here is an screenshot from Finder on macOS that shows Finder 2 timestamps and that is Date Created and Date Modified. You can see in the screenshot that there are 2 different time.
I expect that when I add an image file to a note in Joplin, the timestamp (Date Created and Date Modified) is also kept. When I export the image file later, it should be able to set the timestamp with the original timestamp on macOS and iOS/iPadOS.
Those are for the note, not for the attached images. It seems that right now you need to either a) open the image in external viewer, b) save the image on the disk, or c) right click and select "Reveal file in folder" in order to be able to see more details about the image.
Yes, okay, I misunderstood. I think you are right. You can't have this information natively in Joplin but if you open in an image viewer (for example) you have this information... in my usage it's not a huge effort. What is your use case to have a very regular need for this feature? In what way and in what format do you export this image afterwards?
I have tested it and Joplin does not keep the Creation date and the Modification date when I add image files to notes. The same problem also occurs when I export an image file from a note.
Here are the screenshots.
Original image file opened with macOS internal image viewer (Preview).
This appears to be an issue with how a File System handles file timestamp metadata rather than Joplin not retaining timestamps.
On Windows it's not Joplin failing to keep the creation date. It is because "creation date" for the file system is not what most people think it is. In Windows (NTFS) the created date is not the date the file data was created; it is the date the file was created on the volume to which it is being saved. In other words it's the date the file system object was created and each volume has its own file system.
For instance:
You create a file on your C volume on 01JAN21 12:00. You edit the file on 06JAN21 18:00. So... the created date is 01JAN21 12:00 and the modified date is 06JAN21 18:00.
You never open or edit the file again but on 01MAR21 16:00 you copy it to your D volume.
The created date is now shown as 01MAR21 16:00 but the modified date is still 06JAN21 18:00. So the file looks like it was created after it was last modified. (This assumes you are copying from an NTFS volume to an NTFS volume). However what it is reporting is true as it was created on the D volume after the last modification.
People probably do not to notice this discrepancy as file managers tend to display only the modified date.
When you click on a file attachment in Joplin and save it to disk you are creating a new file system object and so NTFS stamps it with the current date / time. Being an attachment the file is in the Joplin resources directory and so this file save appears to work as a file copy and the modified date is retained.
Whilst different file systems seem to do the same thing with dates and times they do not always do it in the same way, have the same definition of what "created" or "modified" means, or store some timestamp data at all.
You can see this in Joplin...
