datemodified:today — find files modified today or yesterday (Windows, Mac, Linux)

This is the classic rescue search: you know you edited the file yesterday, you just can't remember what it's called — or where you saved it. The date is the one thing you do know, so search by date. Every operating system can do it; here's the fastest method on each.

The short version: on Windows, type datemodified:yesterday into any File Explorer search box. If you have Everything installed, type dm:yesterday instead and sort by Date Modified — it's instant across all drives. On a Mac, type date:today into Spotlight or build a smart folder on Last modified date. On Linux, find . -mtime -1 lists everything changed in the last 24 hours.

Copy-paste queries by file type

Click the search box in File Explorer (top-right of any folder window, or This PC to cover every drive), paste one of these and press Enter:

Swap datemodified: for datecreated: to find files that arrived today (downloads, copies, email attachments you saved) rather than files you edited. Or build any combination here — the full query builder adds size and text-inside-file filters:

1. File Explorer date filters (built into Windows)

Open the folder you probably saved into (start with Documents, Desktop or Downloads), click the search box in the top-right, and Explorer reveals its search ribbon:

1. Click Search options → Date modified (on Windows 11; it's a ribbon dropdown on Windows 10) and pick Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, This month or This year.
2. Or skip the menu and type the filter directly into the search box:

datemodified:today
datemodified:yesterday
datemodified:this week
datemodified:6/1/2026..6/12/2026

The two-dots range syntax is the hidden gem — it accepts any pair of dates. Searching from This PC covers all drives but is slow outside indexed locations; searching a specific folder is much quicker.

Narrowing to one file type

A date filter on its own can still return hundreds of results, most of them temp files and browser cache. Add a file-type filter and the noise disappears — operators separated by a space are joined with an implicit AND, so no extra syntax is needed:

*.docx datemodified:today
*.xlsx datemodified:yesterday
*.pdf datemodified:this week
*.pptx datemodified:today
ext:xlsx datemodified:this month
kind:document datemodified:last week

Order doesn't matter: datemodified:today *.docx is the same query. Use *.xls* rather than *.xlsx if you also want macro-enabled workbooks, and kind:document when you don't know or care about the extension — it covers Word, PDF, text and a dozen other formats at once.

Two details that break the query

No space after the colon. datemodified: today is parsed as an empty filter plus the word "today", and returns nothing useful. Write it as one word: datemodified:today. Windows accepts the shorter modified:today as a synonym too.

yesterday is a closed window, not "the last 24 hours." A file you edited at 11pm last night and again at 9am today only answers to datemodified:today. If you're unsure which side of midnight the edit fell on, use datemodified:this week and sort the results by Date modified.

Every other Explorer operator — datecreated:, size:, content:, boolean AND/OR/NOT, and the localisation quirks that stop these queries working on non-English installs — is in our Windows Search syntax cheat sheet. The broader Windows file search guide covers indexing setup.

Every datemodified: value, in one table

These relative values all work in the Windows 10 and Windows 11 search box. They also work with datecreated: (when the file first arrived on this machine), dateaccessed: (last opened) and datetaken: (a photo's EXIF capture date).

Note that this week and last month keep their space — the space belongs to the value, not the operator, so datemodified:this week is correct as typed.

2. The Recent items folder (the file you just had open)

Windows quietly keeps shortcuts to everything you've opened recently:

1. Press Win+R, type recent, press Enter.
2. Sort the folder by Date modified (newest first).
3. Right-click the shortcut you want → Open file location to find where the real file lives.

This works even for files you opened from a USB stick or network share, and it's often the fastest answer when the file was open this morning. It only tracks files you opened through standard dialogs, though — files written by scripts or saved by some apps never appear here.

3. Everything's dm: syntax — instant, across every drive

The free tool Everything turns this entire problem into a two-second job, because it already knows the modified date of every file on your NTFS drives. Type any of these into its search box:

dm:today
dm:yesterday
dm:last2hours
dm:thisweek

Then click the Date Modified column header to sort newest-first. The result list updates as you type, with no waiting and no index rebuild — that immediacy is why this is our default method on Windows. Narrow further by adding terms: dm:today .docx, or dm:last2hours report. You can even scope to a folder: c:\projects\ dm:thisweek.

4. PowerShell, when you need precision or a script

For exact cut-offs, scheduled checks, or output you can pipe elsewhere, open PowerShell in the folder you care about and run:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Where-Object LastWriteTime -gt (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)

That lists everything modified in the last 24 hours, recursively. Useful variations:

# Last 2 hours
Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Where-Object LastWriteTime -gt (Get-Date).AddHours(-2)

# Newest 20 files first
Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File | Sort-Object LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 20

Add -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue after -Recurse if permission errors clutter the output on system folders.

5. Mac: Finder smart folders, Spotlight and mdfind

Three options, from clicky to scriptable — all covered in more depth in our Mac file search guide:

• Spotlight: press ⌘+Space and type date:today (or date:yesterday) plus any keyword you remember.
• Finder smart folder: in Finder choose File → New Smart Folder, click the + button, set the rule to Last modified date → within last → 1 days, then Save it to the sidebar. It updates itself forever — a permanent "what changed today" view.
• Terminal: query the Spotlight index directly:

mdfind 'kMDItemFSContentChangeDate >= $time.today'

Append -onlyin ~/Documents to scope it to one folder tree.

6. Linux: find, -mmin and fd

The classic find handles dates with -mtime (days) and -mmin (minutes):

# Modified in the last 24 hours
find . -mtime -1

# Modified in the last 60 minutes
find . -mmin -60

If you have the modern fd installed, the same searches read more naturally and run faster:

fd --changed-within 1d
fd --changed-within 60min

Pipe either through ls -lt-style sorting with find . -mtime -1 -printf '%T@ %p\n' | sort -rn to get newest-first. Our Linux file search guide covers find, locate and friends in full.

Which tool to reach for

• Windows, file edited recently, name unknown: Everything with dm: — nothing else comes close for speed.
• No software installs allowed: Explorer's datemodified: filters do the job, just slower on unindexed locations.
• Hunting what's eating disk space rather than what changed: that's a different search — see how to find large files.
• Choosing a long-term search tool: our best file search software roundup compares ten options across Windows, Mac and Linux.

datemodified:today not working? Six fixes

When the query returns nothing, or returns everything, it's almost always one of these:

1. A typo in the operator. Explorer silently treats an unknown operator as plain search text, so datamodified:today, detemodified:today or datemodified.today (a dot instead of a colon) search for a file literally named that and find nothing. Check the spelling: date + modified, then a colon.
2. A space after the colon. datemodified: today breaks the filter. Write it as one token: datemodified:today.
3. Windows isn't in English. The keywords today, yesterday and this week are localised, so on a Portuguese, German or French install the English words may not be recognised. Don't guess the translation — open Search options → Date modified and pick Today from the menu. Explorer then types the correct syntax for your language into the search box, and you can copy it for next time.
4. The date format is back to front. Typed dates follow your regional settings: datemodified:08/09/2026 is 9 August in the US and 8 September in the UK. If a date search looks a month off, swap the day and month, or use a relative keyword instead.
5. You're searching the wrong place. Explorer only searches the folder you're in and its subfolders. Start from This PC if you have no idea where the file went — and check your OneDrive folder, which silently takes over Desktop and Documents on many PCs.
6. It's painfully slow or incomplete. Outside indexed locations Explorer crawls every file, which can take minutes. Either add the folder to the index (see how to fix slow Windows search) or use Everything's dm:today, which is instant everywhere on NTFS drives.

Still nothing? The file may never have been saved where you think — our guide to finding a file you just saved (or never saved) covers AutoRecover folders, Recent lists and email-attachment temp folders.

Troubleshooting: when timestamps lie

• Modified vs created vs accessed. Every file carries three timestamps. Modified changes when content is saved; created is when this copy appeared on this disk; accessed is unreliable (Windows often defers or disables updating it for performance). Date searches above all use modified — usually what you want.
• Copied files keep their modified date. Copy a 2024 file today and it shows modified 2024, created 2026 — yes, "created" after "modified" is normal. If you're hunting a file you copied (not edited) recently, search by created instead: datecreated:today in Explorer, dc:today in Everything.
• Cloud placeholders. OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive online-only files are stubs until downloaded, and a sync client can bump timestamps when it re-downloads or resolves conflicts — so a file may show "modified today" that nobody touched. Check the cloud service's own version history when dates look wrong.
• Nothing shows up at all. You're probably searching the wrong scope. Re-run from This PC (Windows) or / with sudo (Linux), then narrow down once you get hits.

FAQ