1804500 - Downloading a file with Swedish letters in the file name corrupts exfat harddrive on macOS

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Widget: Cocoa, defect, P2)

Description

[romraptor]

Attachment: firefox mac exfat.zip

Steps to reproduce:

Hi! I use Firefox daily as my primary browser on macOS Ventura and came a cross a very strange, but serious bug that is reproducible 100% of the time.

If I download a file that contains Swedish letters in the file name (åäö) to my external harddrive (exfat) I cannot access the file and the folder gets corrupted. First Aid in Disk Utility finds and fixes this (see attachment), but running the Disk Utility every time I download a file with Swedish letters in the file name is of course not a long term solution.

Actual results:

All points below are reproducible 100% of the time:
If I download the file with Firefox to my external harddrive (exfat) the folder gets corrupted.
If I download the file with Firefox to an external harddrive of another brand (exfat) the folder gets corrupted.
If I download the file with Firefox to my internal harddrive (APFS) it works.
If I download the file with Safari it works on both my internal and external harddrive.

To summarize, the exact combination that causes this error is Swedish letters, Firefox and exfat. Of course this bug might also affect other special characters, but I haven't had time to test that. Thanks in advance!

Expected results:

The file should just have downloaded without affecting the harddrive in any way.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Cocoa' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 1/26)]

Setting n-i for myself to look at this.

Comment 3

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 1/26)]

I'm finally getting back to this. Could you please clarify what you mean by "gets corrupted"? Do you mean that you can't double-click on the file and it doesn't open in the default app? Or is there another type of corruption that's happening?

Also, could you try a "fake rename" and see if the file can be opened at that point? In macOS Finder, don't actually rename the file but just trigger the edit function and press enter to save the non change.

Comment 4

[romraptor]

This was a year ago so it's hard for me to remember every detail. I've uninstalled and stopped using Firefox since. Having to use Disk Utility every time a downloaded file included Swedish letters wasn't sustainable.

I really can't give any more info other than the screenshots and description already given. However, as previously stated, it wasn't just the file. The entire folder got corrupted every time.

Comment 5

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 1/26)]

(In reply to romraptor from comment #4)

I really can't give any more info other than the screenshots and description already given. However, as previously stated, it wasn't just the file. The entire folder got corrupted every time.

Do you remember in what way the folder got corrupted? Were you unable to store other files in it? Were you unable to open it in Finder? In other words, what made you determine that any corruption had taken place? You did mention that you couldn't open the file, but it isn't clear what happened to the folder itself.

Comment 6

[romraptor]

If I recall correctly the folder disappeared from Finder when I tried to open the downloaded file and I had to use Disk utility to get it back.

Do you have an external exfat formatted drive you could test this with?

Comment 7

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 1/26)]

I am unable to reproduce this with Firefox 126, macOS 14.4 and an external exfat formatted drive. It is possible that this was fixed by a macOS update. Please reopen this bug in case the problem reappears.