An Introduction To Mac Finder Tags 

Yeah, I wish there were more colours, but tags is not really about the colour...

I don't know of any tagging system that has levels. No need for it. Tag them as you like: recipes, chicken, beef, etc.

Not sure which two things you are comparing. There is no "iCloud" menu in the menu bar in the Finder, nor is there a Locations menu. Can you be more specific?

Finder, Settings, Tags. Drag tags to the bottom part.

Thank you

Yes. Select multiple files and use any of the methods I show.

Probably depends on the NAS, but also the file system that the drive in the NAS is using. For instance if it is using a Windows format, then it may not be compatible with Mac file system things like tags and such.

@@macmost Ah ok - thanks Gary!

No. That is for your filesystem.

Maybe your text is white, but transparent too? Try things, play around. Try changing the color of the text, the opacity, etc. Recreate the text from scratch. Experiment. That's you find problems and fix things.

@@macmost Thank you and greatly appreciated. I will to follow your instructions.

I don't see any way to do that. What's your goal? Maybe if I knew that, I could suggest something else.

I mean CYAN

No, you can create as many tags as you need, but you only have those basic colors to use.

Control+1 is in System Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts (button), Mission Control (sidebar), Mission Control (expand that item) and you'll see Switch to Desktop 1.

Yes. See ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-J09jrt9FNO8.html

I'm assuming that you are asking how to search for items with a particular tag. First you may want to know that if you use Spotlight or the Finder search field and type a tag name, say 'food', it will find all the items tagged with 'food'. But it will find other items that somehow contain 'food'. If you want only the items _tagged_ with 'food', search instead for 'tag:food'. OK, now I will answer your question. You want to use the command mdfind, which allows you to do a Spotlight-like search in the command line. So _mdfind tag:food_ will return the items tagged with 'food'. But in general I advice you to put your search string in quotes. That way you can use special characters and build complex queries with logic, etc.

@@Strodie567 "If you want only the items tagged with 'food', search instead for 'tag:food'." Brillant advice, thank you. (Also in German) Servus

Great that it worked! But regarding the quotes... You placed them around the tag. That is useful for example if the tag has spaces (yes, they *can* have spaces!). But what I meant was quotes (single or double, just be consistent) around the whole expression. So you can make a query like: mdfind "(tag:food OR tag:dessert) AND NOT tag:soup" Or even combine with other criteria like creation date or file type, etc.

I think so. Give it a try and see. Though it may make it harder to add tags via keyboard.

Right after doing it you could probably just have used Command+Z to undo. But now you'll just have to remember what file it was and find it. Search for it.

@@macmost I did undo but it did not restore it. We checked the trash can and the file is not there. I will search for it as you suggested. Thank you so much. 🙏🏻

You can assign a color to the new created tag he showed that in the video

@@husamejle Yes, I can use one of those existing colours, but I cannot add new colours, beyond those 7, to better distinguish the new tag(s). So either a repeated colour or no colour at all .-(

@@ateliercunha2876 There are only six colors. Apple said so. Remember the old logo?

@@acffh Yes; they also add grey to tags. I would love more colors.

You only have those colors. Think of the color as secondary. So maybe you have 30 tags that are work projects and they are all orange. You have 10 tags that are non-work and they are all blue, etc.

Not sure what you mean by that. If you have a how-to question, you can ask it here: macmost.com/ask

I don't have a question, I have some feedback about some misbehavior of buttons within preferences panes when accessing a mac remotely thru VNC or screen share. Remember those situation when when you have to approve on security preference the load of a KEXT? Well the approval button only works when pressed directly from a connected mouse. Remote access doesn't trigger the button process and the KEXT load is not approved. Do you understand now this is not a question or misbehavior? Preference panes doesn't work like other panes when used remotely by design. I thought this could be something to mention on some of your videos.

Not sure. Experiment to find out.

Sure. Start in the Home folder, search for files with that extension (in that folder only), select all of the results, tag them all at once.

@macmostvideo Thanks Gary. I should have thought of that!

the official word from apple on this is SHUT UP THERE ARE ONLY SIX COLORS

You can't do custom colors. Focus on the keyword for the tag itself, and think of the color as secondary. So maybe you have 30 tags that are work projects and they are all orange. You have 10 tags that are non-work and they are all blue, etc.

@@macmost So I guessed. Thx, Gary. -JB

I don’t use the photos app. Rather, I store all my photos (jpegs) in a subfolder in Documents. That enables me to use tags like in any other document. As a side note, I’ve been a photographer over 20 yrs and I still don’t understand why you need a special app folder for photos!

Ben: The Photos app has tons and tons of functionality just for photos. You can search by person or object in the photo, you can adjust and edit photos in various ways, you can share photos and create online galleries. Just to name a few. Plus, the best feature is you can use iCloud Photos and when you take a photo on your iPhone it is automatically on all of your Apple devices. There is so much there.

Wait, you see your Photos tags in the Finder? Those are separate tag systems. I certainly don't see my Photos tags (Keywords) in the Finder. Maybe you are just using the Finder to tag those files?

@@macmost That’s right , I have to tag photos manually (which I do occasionally for updating my website with different pictures). Also, I’m aware of some of the features in the photos app but I don’t use icloud for syncing photos or use the edit features or do people searches. I originally switched from Windows 5 yrs ago so I’m used to a standard documents file structure, which works well for me. Thanks for your advice & I appreciate all your mac tips.

@@macmost I think you’re right. I tagged the pics when I had windows, then when I got my Mac I imported into to photos. I away from my computer so I’ll compare tags to the pics in photos when return to confirm. Thanks.

No, those are the only color choices.

Probably because you reusing OneDrive. I don't think a non-Apple system would support Apple tags.

I don't think you can. If you want to find a tag, you can search for it though.

Back works sure. Or just navigate to somewhere else using a sidebar item or keyboard shortcut.

@@macmost thanks for the tip!

Yes. Start in that folder. Then when searching make sure at the top of the window it has that folder selected not "This Mac."

No custom colors. I think the deal here is that more colors would be Gard to distinguish anyway. Red vs crimson? Dark blue vs navy blue? It may sound nice, but I bet Apple tested this and found it was frustrating.

@@macmost Fair enough ,-) Thanks Gary.

If you use iCloud Drive, you should see the tags on both Macs. But if you send the file by itself, I can see that it probably doesn't bring tagging info with it, especially if it is a non-Apple formatted drive as that would not support it. What sort of metadata are you trying to add?

@@macmost Darn I thought that might be it. Tags or Keywords. I ended up skipping over the simplest solution because I've never used it. 😅 *_Adobe Bridge_* allows you to create and import Keyword libraries so that multiple people can use the same system of tagging. I'm lucky that I already had a subscription though. Windows lets you access and edit your metadata more easily but the only other easy to access & free solution I found on Mac was Exiftool that runs via the terminal. Mac's Photos app lets you edit your photo metadata but only photos.

using hazel app would accomplish this

Yes, Hazel would probably work, but that functionality is built into MacOS… it’s just a matter of writing an AppleScript for it. And its been many years now since I have written one… Sooo… Gary, if you are reading this, People might find it useful(Hint, Hint!)

@@JenniferEliseAtchiso AppleScript is a very 'Gary R' solution but I am not skilled in AppleScript - hazel would be automatic and so would the AppleScript ?

@@JenniferEliseAtchiso "Hint, hint." Süß - für mein Merkheft.

Or you can just add the folder as a favourite in Finder?

Tags are a part of the macOS Finder and file system. Windows doesn't do anything with them. It doesn't know they exist.

@@macmost exactly. That is a known problem with tags that should have been addressed I think. I get that this is a Mac only channel but for some that isn’t the whole picture. I for one, and I’m far from alone in this, use Macs for personal use but windows at work. Here work almost always equip you with a work computer. BYOD is not widespread here. Therefore employees don’t have much say in what platform is standard in the workplace. If you’re a Mac user having to switch or use both it’s a good piece if I do to include here that it’s Mac only. Tagging files isn’t a thing in windows yet.

Backup in what sense? They should be backed up in Time Machine along with the files.

Not sure what you mean. Is that a tag you created? If so, you can remove any tag by getting info on the file, selecting the tag, and deleting it.

Try it and see.

Not in my perception. If shared tags are possible, then this function hides from me very cleverly.

Command+F, then Tags, Matches, Red. Then +. Then Tags, Matches, Orange. Save that as a Smart Folder if it is something you do a lot.

Every file (and scan) that I might use/need for my taxes gets a yellow tag. I have yellow marked files in my Bank folder and in my Receipts folder and in my Daughter folder and in my Medical folder and in my Insurance folder… etc. Once I (finally!) do my taxes: Hit the YELLOW TAG button and BOOM: All those files pop up.

@@faraway7696 Thanks. So you’ve “tax”files on the different devices through icloud? Then it’d work. But If you set yellow tag for your files than you’ll see all tagged ‘tax’ files for all periods, not for current. Right?

Perhaps that external drive is not formatted for Mac? If so, then Spotlight may not be able to index it properly.

@@macmost thanks for the reply. I can read and write files to/from the Mac via the external drive, so I think that side of is ok.

@@Red_E_Read Reading and writing doesn't use Spotlight. Spotlight is what indexes the drive for searches. If searching isn't working right, it is usually because there is no Spotlight index, or a limited one, and that could be because the drive is formatted for Windows instead of for Mac.

@@macmost I will check, thanks

Still struggling with searching tags on the external drive (Samsung T5). I’ve formatted based on another one of you videos and re-indexed. The files on the T5 are tagged with the same tagged copies on iCloud, but when I search by tag only iCloud results are returned?

Impossible for me to tell based on that. Just check what you are doing carefully. Try some other files and other tags.

See my other reply.

Not sure what you mean. You can use Finder, Settings, Tags to see a list of all of your tags. Or, do you mean you want to see a list of all FILES that have a tag applied? Maybe a Smart Folder with Tags "is not" and then a new tag like "X" that is not used by any file.

No.

@@macmost thank you!

Actually, the admin of the aliases is way higher, but you don't realize because tags are foreign to you. Let me give you an example. Suppose you have a file that you want to associate to ten "categories". In the tag model, you just type the tags (actually, autocomplete is your friend). In the alias model, I guess you already have ten folders, one per category. You put the file in one of them, create nine aliases and move an alias to each of the other nine folders. So far so good. But suppose that you realize that the filename is incorrect. Now you need to look for the nine aliases and change their names also. That's an admin cost. So maybe you don't rename the aliases, in which case you have to live with inconsistent/incorrect names. Now suppose that a year later you want to delete the file. So you delete the real copy and each of the aliases, right? Or do you leave cadavers of the aliases spread all around your disk? But do you remember how many aliases, and more importantly, in which of the hundreds of folders you placed them a year ago? Ah, you need to use Spotlight to find all the files with similar names. Which works if you weren't lazy a year early when you decided to correct the name of the real file. Again, admin costs. With the tag model there is only one file. Want to change its name? Sure, your tags don't care about the name. Want to delete it? Just delete it. Its tags will die with it (but other items that share some of the tags will keep them, of course).

@@Strodie567 Yes thanks you make some good points. However you don’t mention the downside of tags for very big projects.

@@jeffharmed1616 Sorry, I don't think I follow you. If you are referring to tagging a large number of files, I ran the following test in this 2015 MacBook Pro: I used the search field in a Finder window to search for ".pdf". It found over 2000 files, most of them PDFs, of course. I selected all of them and used the tag icon on the top of the window (which the video did not mention, BTW) to tag them all. (I used the tag "deleteme" to ensure that I was not re-using an existing tag). The Finder did ask me to authenticate myself because I was about to modify too many files. It also informed me that I didn't have privileges to tag a few of the files, but in just one message. It took around two minutes to tag 2,266 files located all over my drive. Thanks to Spotlight, I could search for "tag:deleteme", or use the new entry on the sidebar, to get the list of all 2,266 files in a second or so. Then I selected all those files, and with the icon on the top I could see around 15 tags in gray (meaning that each tag was present in at least one file, but not in all the files) and the tag "deleteme" was in black (meaning that all those files shared that tag). That happened instantaneously. In the same box, I selected and deleted the "deleteme" tag to remove it from every file. (There is a faster way to delete all instances of a tag, but I wanted to do it in this way as it is more representative of regular use.) It took 1 minute 46 seconds (this time I had a timer). I checked some of the old tags, and it seems that they are all still there, safely linked to their files. Or perhaps you are thinking of a different "very big project" scenario?

What is the present strategy of record-keeping and where do tags fit into it? That is the question on my mind. Computer folders are digital versions of past physical records, time capsules if you like. What is the thinking behind modern record-keeping? What are the main ideas behind them and where do tags fit it? Are tags just a passing fad or do they represent something really useful (like capital letters meant to algebra when introduced around 2,000 years ago).