on my Mac, the finder systematically fails to display the most recent downloaded files, or files synchronized through Nextcloud, under "recent files". For some reason, it always displays some random selection of recently used files. It's completely useless. In fact, I look for recent files using "find" in the terminal. At least this work.

On my Linux laptop, Nautilus (Gnome) displays exactly the last files in the right order, and it's incredibly useful.

There are countless annoyances like this on MacOS; window focus and placement always surprises and annoys me, even if Rectangle helps somewhat. I find it so much less usable and useful than Gnome.

>or files synchronized through Nextcloud, under "recent files"

Are those created/updated with the current date when they sync, or with the date they have on the host system?