4/20/23
9:00 am

An Introduction To Mac Finder Tags

You can use Finder tags as a way to organize your files on your Mac and throughout iCloud Drive. Tags are more dynamic than folders since a file can only be in one folder, but can have many tags applied.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the basics of using Mac Finder Tags.
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In the Finder on your Mac you can apply one or more Tags to files or folders. Tags can help you label and categorize items in the Finder and help you build your own organizational system. So, for instance, here I am in the Finder and I have a variety of folders and I have files in all those folders. Now what I can do in addition to having files with good names inside of folders with good names is I can apply Tags to any of these items. Now you're going to see Tags in the left sidebar usually at the bottom if you scroll down. If you don't see anything under Tags click on the little disclosure triangle to the right and then you get your list of tags below. If you haven't used Tags before chances are you just have a set of default tags which are the names of colors. It is not really very useful to use color names for tags. These are just there as examples. 
So if you wanted to Tag a file, like say this one, you could do that in many different ways. For instance, I could Control click, right click, two-finger click on a trackpad, and then select one of the Tags here. Notice that each tag is represented by a little circle with a color. But if I move my pointer over it I see the name of the tag under it. So if I wanted to tag this file with red I could just click there. Now you can see in the Finder here that not only do you see the file name but you'll see a dot with that color in it to the right. You could also Control click and then use the Tags item below those chips there and then you get this little window that appears and you can select one of the colors here or you could type the name of the tag. The idea that eventually you're going to have way more tags than you could see here in a short list so you'll just type the name of the tag. But you could also use this to create a new tag by typing the name. I'm going to add the orange tag to this file. But notice that the window doesn't go away. I can add another tag to any file. I can add more than one tag to any file. So I have this file tagged both orange and red. Now you're going to see both of those dots here. 
You can also tag files by simply dragging them to these items here in the left sidebar. So if I drag this over to red and drop you can see how it gets that red tag. In addition you can select a file and then use Command i to get info. I'm going to use Command Option i to bring up the Inspector instead. The advantage of the Inspector is it will stay there as I select different files. I don't have to open up a new Info window for every file. You can see here at the top it shows me the tags there. I can click in there and add a new tag. I can also just type in here, for instance, if I start typing the name of a tag it will auto-complete. I can press return and now you can see I've got these three tags applied to this file here. Then you can see I now have three dots represented here in the Finder. 
As I mentioned before you can create a new tag just by typing it here. So let's create a new tag called Work. I'll just type Work and press return and you can see the tag is added there. Now when I select a different file, like this one, I can easily add Work there by typing it or, since I don't have very many tags, it's going to appear in this list. I'll also see it appear here at the bottom of this list in the left sidebar. There is only so much room for tags here. So after you've added a few you're only going to see the most commonly used ones. But this does make it very easy to, say, select another file and drag it to that tag there to add that tag. Notice that since I have not assigned a color to this tag it won't appear here in the Finder list. I just see the colored dots not the blank dots. 
So to manage your tags you can go to Finder and then Settings and then under Tags you can see all your tags. You can select a tag like this and then move your pointer over the dot next to it, click on the little down arrow there to assign a color to it. So I can make this the yellow dot. So now you could see a bunch of yellow dots appear here because I have added Work as a tag and you can even see Work now shows up as yellow. You can also use this list here to select tags that you're not using, like this one here. I can Control Click on it and Delete the Tag. I can also decide which ones appear in the left sidebar. So I can remove ones from that and now you can see I only see the ones that I've got selected there. 
Now how do you use Tags? Well, you can easily see all files with a tag by simply selecting the Tag on the left. If I click on red you can see it goes to a special view where I'm viewing all of the files tagged with red. It doesn't matter which folder they are in. They'll just be here in a list and I could use all the standard Finder views to see these. If I want to see all the orange files I can do that. If I want to see all the ones I've tagged with Work I can do that. 
To remove a Tag all you need to do is Control Click on a file and you'll see some tags here that are checked or not. If I click on the X there for a tag it removes it. A better way to remove one is to bring up either the Info window or Inspector, like that, and you can see the tag there and select it and delete it or you can just Edit this like a text field going back and forth with arrow keys and deleting various tags. So you can see here I've removed all tags from this file. 
Once a file is tagged there is two main ways to use it. One is to look at a list of everything with that tag. The other is to simply use the dots as a visual aid to quickly find a file. The idea here is that you can easily organize your files this way. Like, for instance, in my projects folder here I've been using folders called Project Alpha and Project Beta and putting all of the files for those projects in those folders. But instead I could have selected all of the files here. I'm going to Control Click and go to Tags and then I'm going to add Alpha as a tag. Then I'm going to go into the Beta folder here and select all of these files and that folder and Control Click and then go to Tags and then create a Tag called Beta applied to all of those. So now if I look at the tags here I can look at all my Alpha files there and all by Beta project files there. If I don't want to I no longer need to have these folders. I can just have all these files at the main level of this Project Folder. Where this really comes in handy is if a file applies to more than one project. With folders there is no way to do that. I would have to have a copy of this image in my Project Alpha folder. But if I'm using it in Project Beta I'd have to make another copy of it and put it in my Project Beta folder. But here I could simply go to this file here and add the Beta Tag to it as well. So now it will appear in both projects. When I look at the Alpha Tag it is there. When I look at the Beta tag it is there. 
For a lot of people having one file applied to more than one project or category is very common. Folders will fail you if you're trying to organize like that. For instance say you do client work. This file here applies to a specific client. So I'm going to add that client as a tag. Then this file here, that applies to a different client. So I'll add that client there. But perhaps this file is something that applies to both clients. Well, I could easily add both clients to this file as Tags and now when I look at each client's tag I'll see the appropriate files even though one of those is shared between the two clients. 
Say you're a graphic designer and you use a piece of art for several different clients. You want to make sure that at anytime you could provide the clients with all of their files, you could take that one file with the names of all the clients that apply and then anytime you look at the tag for that client you will see that file even though there is just one file and that file is used by multiple clients. 
Here's another example. You've got two files here and they both have to do with your taxes. Now you may file these away in different folders having to do with different years but sometimes you just want to see all of your tax info. So you could take these two files here and I'm going to apply the tag Taxes. Now that is set to both of these items. So anytime I look at Taxes I'm going to see anything with that tag applied no matter which folder it is in. Now I can feel free to put these files in different locations based on year and yet still have one place where I can easily see them all. 
One of the best things about Tags is they work perfectly with iCloud Drive. So you're going to see the same Tags across all of your different devices including any iPads and iPhones. In the Files App on the iPad and iPhone you can also view your files by Tags, assign Tags, and so on. So if you really like to do a good job organizing your files but you're not using Tags yet I hope this encourages you to look into them. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 28 Responses to “An Introduction To Mac Finder Tags”

JAMES OLIVER

2 years ago

You are the master of explaining the Mac. Never saw the point of tags until this video.

David Tattersall

2 years ago

Brilliant video Gary, previously I had not understood how tags worked. Just spent an fruitful hour tagging all my files so that I can now find specfic files with ease, many thanks for the effort you put into the videos.

Jonas

2 years ago

Thanks for the Video Gary. I believe now I'm ready for some tags organisation power.

Peter

2 years ago

Excellent content, as always, delivered with clarity and concision. Also currently enjoying your Mac Pages online course. Check out Gary's courses, folks. They're top-notch, reasonably priced and absolutely worth the money.

Arthur

2 years ago

I have a Client folder with aliases pointing to associated client files. How does this compare to the use of tags?

T Edward

2 years ago

If you’re using files in multiple projects, “Folders will fail you…“ unless you use aliases, a.k.a. shortcuts. But this might be a more elegant solution. Thanks!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Arthur: Aliases are little harder to maintain. For instance, if you are looking at the original file, there's no way to know if you created an alias to it or where that alias may be.

Bent, Denmark

2 years ago

Combining Smart Folders and Tags is very handy. Like Tags, Smart Folders are so easy to construct and change. Recently Gary made a video on Smart Folders. I combined the two videos, and the result is amazing.

nick

2 years ago

Gary: might have missed it, but is there a way to tag a folder and have all the sub-folders and files within it also become tagged? thx

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

nick: Not just by tagging the folder, but you can select multiple things like I show in the video and tag them all at once. So use List view and you can tag all sorts of things at once.

Kathy

2 years ago

Hi Gary, If I open a certain tagged pages file from 'tags' in finder, I can't change the thumbnail page order unless I access the file directly from my docs. Any other changes are fine except reordering thumbnails in sidebar of pages doc. If I access it from docs, I am able to reorder the pages. Also, again by clicking the tag in finder window & same pages doc, by clicking the path bar destination file, then I can reorder the pages. Not sure what I'm doing wrong,or if this is expected? thanks!!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Kathy: Not sure what you are dealing with there. Are you opening the file in Pages, or just previewing it in the Finder or using Quick Look. Pages doesn't care how you open the file. But make sure you are opening it.

Kathy

2 years ago

Hi Gary, When I open finder, in my tags, I click the tag that corresponds & leads me to that particular pages file, then I double click to open the file from there. That's where I can't re-order the thumbnails. Strange though that if I only high- light the file & then double click the file in the path bar, (directly to the file location), it will allow me to reorder the thumbnails that way. Seems odd doesn't it. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you so much Gary

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Kathy: I'm missing something here I can't see. It shouldn't matter how you open the file. That wouldn't change how Pages behaves. You'll need to have someone take a look at what you are doing. Maybe call Apple Support.

Jasper

2 years ago

Besides organisation, it’s useful to have tags for temporary reasons. E.g., I use one, #meetings, so that I can talk through items that I need in a meeting/presentation without wasting time searching, or showing confidential/sensitive items to the wrong people. Another is #!, which I use on items that I’m going to use in the next few days, just to help to get started in the morning.

Nick W

2 years ago

Can tags be added to each to increase specificity? Ie Taxes. +. 2021. + Donations would only bring up files that had those three tags. Or Taxes 2021 Donations would bring up all files that had any of those tags. Thanks!

Jim Cliff

2 years ago

Gary, since watching your video on tags and why to use them I have become a fan of tags. However, I seem to be missing something because I have several file types that I can not apply tags. In particular, those files with the extension of .afphoto, the file extension for Affinity Photo app. Are there file types that will not accept tags?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Jim: I have a few of those and I was able to apply tags as normal. Perhaps there is some other factor. Are they on another drive or in some sort of cloud system?

Jim Cliff

2 years ago

Thanks for the reply. Don't know what the problem was/is but I made a duplicate of the files in question and the Affinity files accepted tags with no problem. Shall remain a mystery as to why.

Jane

2 years ago

Thanks Gary. Related to this is, how do I get those bright tag colours I see on your video? Mine are all very dull and I can hardly tell the difference between red, orange and yellow. Also, the yellow minimise button at the top left of each window is brown. Otherwise all my colours, e.g. apps in the dock, are perfect. I am using Ventura on a 2021 14" MacBook. Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Jane: Perhaps you have some setting in System Settings, Accessibility, Display switched on that mutes colors?

Jane

2 years ago

Thanks for that suggestion, Gary. Yes, I found the tag colours became much brighter when I turned off 'Increase contrast'. However, other things such as menu bars and sidebars are now too pale for my liking. Swings and roundabouts, I guess!

Darren Gosnell

1 year ago

I use this extensively to sort both files and docs - its great.
But when I click on a file in Finder (tagged or untagged from anywhere) and do a COPY, then click on my tagged in the sidebar, im presented with my Tagged Folders I choose one, but Im unable to use the PASTE function (as in it does not exist), until I actually choose 'open the enclosing folder' ... only then I can Paste. Weird

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Darren: When you click on the Tag in the sidebar, you are then switching to a list of files with that tag. It isn't a location, it is a list, like search results. So there is no place to paste into. You need to go to a folder, which IS a location, to paste.

Darren Gosnell

1 year ago

thx for your prompt reply Gary. I realise that, howver when the list of tagged folders in presented (in finder - not the side bar) I click on one, then try and paste but you cant.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Darren: Confused about what you are doing then. If you tag folders and then view the list of tagged items, you just can't paste there. Select a folder in that list doesn't change that because you are still viewing the list, not IN that selected folder.

Darren Gosnell

1 year ago

Thx Gary, I'll try and step through it - In my SideBar I have a tellow Tag called Financial. I have four folders that in various ways related to Finances. If I click on that Yellow Financial Tag in the SideBar I am presented with the Finder window with all my four folders that are Financial, all good. One of them is Bills.If I now double that Bill folder to view the (they are untagged as it happens) file (bills) in that folder. This is where I now want to paste a file but simply cannot.

Gary Rosenzweig

1 year ago

Darren: OK, I tried that step-by-step and it worked for me. So I'm not sure what the issue could be, sorry.

Comments Closed.

An Introduction To Mac Finder Tags

Comments: 28 Responses to “An Introduction To Mac Finder Tags”

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