.pages and .numbers filename extensions cannot be hidden since macOS 15.4

Many years and releases of Pages and Numbers ago, the Save panel gave the user the option of showing or hiding the saved file extension. Equally so, it has been many years since these applications have offered that user control during saving. The file extensions are now always shown, and that is controlled by a coding decision within the product development team.

As etresoft has clarified, one can hide (or unhide) the file extensions from a Finder Get Info panel. Not something that I personally subscribe too.

Some users that choose to use sentences to name files will find that the filename is so long, though not necessarily exceeding the 255 character limit, that the extension is simply truncated in any Finder view, even with the list view column modified for width.

A hidden file extension is a file extended attribute. If a Pages document has previously had its extension hidden via the Get Info panel, (or an AppleScript) then opening and saving the document in Pages should retain its hidden extension status. New Pages documents will show their extensions upon saving.

I agree. I think it might also be a saving to iCloud issue, as I have had .pdf extensions show up as well, that HAD NOT previously.

I've had similar behavior for .pages and others, but I've been working predominantly in pages since this issue has started to occur and it's been happening to every single one of my documents now. This is a NEW issue.

I save everything via iCloud and not locally.

I've done all the checks and unchecks, all the things listed in this thread, and restarted computer, etc

and upon auto-save, it changes the file name back to one with an extension.

Every time.

Hopefully, there will be some bug fixing soon and another update :)

Luis, for me, it happens only on iCloud locations, and doesn't on local folders.

I also observed .pdf extensions appearing, as Di2721 is mentioning, but I did not really pay attention to them, because they are the exceptions that I turn intentionally the extension visible.

For some time today, I thought that files created by Pages or Numbers and saved without the file extension, would remain like that. It seemed to work first, for several minutes, maybe an hour, but the hidden extension showed up eventually.

However, I have some files that seem to be fixed for good. For those, the file extension has remained hidden after I checked the "Mask extension" from the Get info from the Finder, using my second Mac (MacBook Pro). Note that the trick does not always work for me.

Di2721, another thing I have tried. I removed all of the locally saved data from iCloud and reloaded everything. This did not improve the issue (and took some time to complete).

Bruno. wrote:

I have worked today with Microsoft Excel, and guess what . . . The file that was saved also showed its file extension maybe 5 minutes after it was closed.

Was this file save in a location synced with iCloud?

I did some more tests. First, I restarted both of my Macs. Then I added some more file types to my tests (Keynote, Picture ".heic", ".jpg", ".txt" saved with third party BBEdit (a text editor), Microsoft Word ".docx").

On my i9 iMac, ".numbers" has shown its file extension in both locations (Desktop and Documents). Both Pages and ".png" remained immune every time, as seem to be Keynote and TextEdit, so far. All of the other 6 file extensions have unmasked after some time.

On my MacBook Pro, the results are about the same. The difference is that the Keynote file has shown its file extension on the Desktop, and the BBEdit ".txt" text file has not on my second trial.

I would conclude this experiment by saying that there is some improvement, but there is still a problem somewhere to fix. I guess that Apple has corrected the way their applications save their documents to avoid the issue, but this issue appeared in the first place everywhere at the same time, even with non Apple application, so it is should not be related to Apple applications. I hope that people at Apple are aware of that and someone is still working to find the real cause.

So the issue seems to have returned for some previously created Numbers files. I edited one today, and the extension reappeared not long after saving. I created a new document and copied the cells/charts into it, and the extension remained hidden.

I had 2 other previously created files that were doing the same thing, so I moved them to my downloads folder, which isn't in iCloud and waited a couple minutes then copied them back to the iCloud/Numbers folder, and the extension remained hidden.

I just started noticing this and haven't done a lot of testing, but it seems that maybe the "old" files are still affected if they're in iCloud, but once iCloud sees it as a new file, it no longer happens. I'm not really sure yet, but I'll expand my testing to include some other file types and test some other old files.

IAmSkippermark:

My Pages file was previously created file, and it has remained unaffected from the time I did my macOS update yesterday (right after lunch time), and up to now. I did a dozen of trials on it, during about 30 hours. Just now, it decided to show its file extension. My Keynote file was a new file, created yesterday afternoon. It also just showed its file extension a few minutes ago.

As you did, I decided to create a new Numbers file, to see what it does. After 20 minutes, the file extension remains masked. Note that many of my other test files were also new files (Word ".docx", BBEdit ".txt", ".pdf", ".jpg").

diogenes wrote:

Since upgrading to 15.4, all new Pages and Numbers files show their filetype (filename extension) .pages/.numbers even though the box in Finder Settings is unchecked. This seems like a bug to me since previously they did not appear if the setting was not checked. I don't use other Apple apps so I don't know if the same is occurring with Keynote files. Text Edit .rtf files behave correctly. When the box is checked the .rtf extension appears; unchecked, they do not.

Not sure why you would hide extension to begin with...

Non-the less —the current stable release of Sequoia including bug fixes, security updates is macOS 15.4.1

I would start there...

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

Additional insights re_ Appended File Extensions Pages, Numbers and Keynote

Thanks to @VikingOSX 👍 for this

On macOS, filenames with extensions are how the operating system automatically determines what application will open those documents when double-clicking them in the Finder.

This is the exact issue I am experiencing as well as it only happens to files in iCloud Drive. I was commenting on this issue in this discussion: .pages file extension keeps being added e… - Apple Community

EtreCheck is a great free troubleshooting app to eliminanate playing 20 questions,

https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Can you please clarify: is this issue only appearing in connection with iCloud, i.e., no problems with files stored locally?

Good explanation. That explain my observation #2 and why Pages adds the file extension ".page" in the filename for new documents only. To my experience, Numbers doesn't do that.

Bud in PA:

You are right. This is what we have concluded too.