Why do some pages documents save with .pages at the end and others don't?

Just wondering why only some of my documents have .pages at the end and other's don't. I don't like having that extra text at the end as it distracts from the actual title of the document. If I delete the .pages part it stays away for a little but always ends up coming back.

MacBook Air, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jun 16, 2025 6:28 AM

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Jun 16, 2025 6:51 AM in response to beccaboobop26

On much older Pages versions, Apple used to allow one on the Save or Export panel in Pages to check a box to hide the file extension. This ended with Pages applications released on macOS Mojave, and ever since, Pages has saved its documents with the visible extension. The operating system looks at the extension (even if it is hidden via the Finder Get Info panel) to determine what application(s) can open that document type. These will appear in a secondary Finder Open With menu items.


One should never remove the file extension as then the operating system has no idea what application can open the file, whether by that Open With menu, by double-clicking, or even with the Finder's Quick Look. You can however, hide one or more extensions by selecting the Pages documents in the Finder and by right-clicking that selection, check the Hide extension box on the Get Info panel. When you do that, you will need to sharp eyes to differentiate a multipage Pages document from a multipage PDF of the same name — until you notice the black spiral bound edge visual on the left side of that PDF icon.


Personally, I never hide file extensions as my eye is trained to recognize them by icon stamp and/or the filename. I could see if you came from a Windows background where the File Explorer would display just the filename part. I have used Macs, UNIX, and Linux operating systems for years and simply mentally adjust to the filename presentation unique to each.


The presence of Pages documents with and without file extensions is either because those without came from those earlier Pages versions that allowed hiding the extension, or they were purposefully hidden by the user via the Finder Get Info panel. There is no current means, whether by Pages, or the Finder to automatically hide file extensions when a document is saved.

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Why do some pages documents save with .pages at the end and others don't?

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