Discrepancy between macOS and LR "capture date"/"creatoed on" metadata

"In my catalog, LR shows the capture date of one file as Dec 14 2019 at 9pm. However in the finder, on macOS, the "Date created" is Dec.15 12:00am. The only thing I can think of is that the photo was created on the west coast on an iphone (so GPS date is embedded in the image file), and I am currently on the east coast, with my mac date/time set to the EST."

I'm pretty sure this is is caused by different handling of time zones by LR and Mac OS Finder.

The photo was taken 12/14/2019 21:00 PST, and IOS recorded the capture date in EXIF:DateTimeOriginal = 12/14/2019 21:00 and EXIF:OffsetTimeOriginal = -08:00.

IOS also recorded the file's Date Created as 12/14/2019 21:00 UTC-08:00. 

When LR displays the capture date recorded in EXIF and XMP, it ignores any recorded time zone. So LR will display Capture Date = 12/14/2019 9:00 PM, regardless of which time zone is set for the computer's clock.

However, Mac OS Finder will read the file's Date Created as 12/14/2019 21:00 UTC-08:00 and then display that absolute date/time in the current time zone of the computer.  Since the time zone was set to UTC-05:00 (EST), it displayed the date as 12/15/2019 12:00 AM.

You can verify this by changing the time zone of the computer and seeing the date/time displayed for a file's Date Created change.

It is probably not related to time zones. Part of the explanation is that the capture date and file Date Created are not the same metadata. Capture date means “when the camera captured it” and file Date Created is “when the file was created on a computer file system,” especially for derivative and exported images. So the first thing to do is make sure the same type of date is being viewed in the Finder.  In my examples below, I know that the Date Created is when I exported them.

But…the Finder will not show you the camera capture date when a window is in Icon or List view, as in the first picture.

It can show you the capture date if the window is in Column or Gallery view, and it was exported from Lightroom Classic with a metadata option that includes the capture date, and the View > Show/Hide Preview command is set to Show. But the Finder window doesn’t label it Capture Date, it labels it the Content Created date.

After you set up a Finder window to show the Content Created date, if it matches what Lightroom Classic says like my dates do in the picture, then it all lines up.

This is not specifically a Lightroom thing…you will find the same difference between the macOS Finder and many other photo applications from other companies. Because the difference is in how macOS displays the various types of creation dates in the Finder.