Set Finder Tags With Keyboard Shortcuts and Other Methods

If you like to use Finder tags to organize your files, check out these quick ways to assign and clear tags from selected files. You can use hidden keyboard shortcuts to do it, and also access tags in the Info window, Inspector, or though a special Tags panel.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to quickly apply Finder tags with Keyboard Shortcuts and other techniques.
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So if you like to use Finder tags you may be frustrated with how hard it is to apply a tag to a file. Just doing it for one file one time is no big deal. But if you want to take a bunch of files you may want to have a quicker way to do it. 
Normally you would select a file like this one. Then you can go to File and then you can select one of these Favorited tags here. Or, you can select this and then this comes up and you can type the name of a tag or select one of the ones below. Alternatively you can Control Click, right click on a mouse, two-finger click on a trackpad, and then select one of the favorites here or click there and then also type the name of a tag or select one.
But did you know that there are hidden keyboard shortcuts to do this? So you won't find them here in the Menu at all. They're is no mention of Keyboard Shortcuts. But in fact using the Control Key, that's Control not Command, and then one of the numbers 1-7 will choose one of these seven favorited tags here. The first one is red, the second one is orange, third one is yellow. So with the selected file Control 1 gives you red, 2 gives you orange, and 3 gives you yellow. You can also use these to remove them. So Control 1 and then 2 and then 3 will remove each one. You can also use Control zero to remove all tags from the selected file. 
But what if you don't want to just use one of these favorites here. What if you have your own set of tags and you want to use one of those instead. Well, those just apply to the Favorites. So you can go to Finder Preferences, then go to Tags here, and then you've got your Favorites right here. If you want to add your own just drag it, like this one for Work. I'm going to drag it to the first spot right there. I'm going to drag Invoice to the second spot, and Biz to the third spot. So now that is what appears here in the Finder and these correspond to Control 1, Control 2, Control 3. So Control 1 will apply that first tag. Now no color is selected for it so you won't actually see it indicated here. But if I Control Click on it I can see that one is checked. I did assign a color to Biz so Control 3 will assign Biz and give me that dot. 
So it is as easy as that. You have 7 slots here. You can easily change which one is used for which tag. So you can even just do it temporarily. If you want to assign a tag to a bunch of files you can just take that first spot and drag the tag into it, like this one. Place it there and Control 1 will now allow you to quickly assign or remove the project note tag. Then when you're done you can always just swap these back for whatever you prefer as your default set. 
Now there are other ways to quickly assign tags. For instance, with the file selected I can do Command i for Get Info. You'll see tags right here and you can click in it and select a tag or type a tag. This even works for applying new tags as well. You can just type the new tag there. But you can actually do this just using the keyboard pretty easily. So with the file selected, Command i and then tapping Tab will go to the first thing you can change which is the icon. Tab again goes to the second thing which are the tags here. So two presses of the Tab key gets you there and then you can type what you want. So just start typing and actually it will auto-complete. So one character gets me orange. Then Return. Now I have applied orange to the this file. Command i, Tab, Tab, and I'm here again. I can remove orange. I can add, say, Work really easily. So it gives you a good way to see and edit all the tags in a file with just a few key presses.
Now also note you can use any of these techniques with multiple files at the same time. I'm sometimes asked how you can apply a tag to one file, like this, and then do it to another file but it takes all this work for each individual file. Well, you can just select those three files or maybe if you want to apply them to all the files in this folder do a quick Command A to select All. Then use one of those keyboard shortcuts like Control 1. It's going to assign the tag to all files. Control zero removes all the tags from these files. If I Control Click with all those files selected I can select one of these tags and it is going to apply it to all of them. The same for using the File Menu as well.
But using Get Info is going to get six different Get Info boxes. So instead you use Show Inspector. If you go to File there's Get Info. But if you hold the Option Key down it changes to Show Inspector. Option Command i. So let's do Option Command i and it will bring up this Inspector and it says 6 items. Now I can apply a tag to all six items like that. You can also use Show Inspector to view the tags and make changes as well. So if I select this file and do Command i, I get the Info window here. If I now select this file, this Get Info window is still showing the info for the original file. But if instead I do Option Command i, I'm on the Inspector now. It looks similar but it is a little different. You can tell at the top here it looks different and this window floats above everything else. Whatever I select it is going to show me info for what is selected. So I could go here and I can assign a tag for this file. I can go here and then assign a tag for this file. Then I can easily see the tags for anything that I have selected.
Note if I have two files like this that have different tags and I select both of them, it is going to show me the tag there but you see how they are kind of dimmed showing me that they don't apply to all there. I can actually use this to remove those tags from all those files that are selected. 
Now there's one more technique that I want to show you. What if you want to use a keyboard shortcut to activate the Tags Drop Down. What you get when you go here. Then you can just type whatever you want. Well, you should be able to do that because File Tags is Tags... (dot, dot,dot.) If I go to System Preferences and then go to Keyboard, Shortcuts, then I go to Add Shortcuts, use the plus button here to add a new shortcut. Let's set the Application here to Finder Only and set the Menu Title to exactly Tags... Let's do a keyboard shortcut like Command Option T and Add. Now that seems to be there and it should work, right? But if we go to File and then Tags the keyboard shortcut isn't there. It certainly won't work if we try to use it. So, what's keeping it from working? Well, this section here is actually a special section with these dots and this Tag's dot dot dot button. It's not a regular part of the menu. So it doesn't work with those keyboard shortcuts. But you can make it a regular part of the Menu. 
The way to do that is to go to Finder Preferences, go to Tags, and for each one of these drag out, like that, to remove all of the favorites. Now, of course, this makes it hard to use any of the other techniques I just showed you. But if you get to know Favorites then what happens is, in the File Menu the special section goes away and is replaced with a standard menu item Tags... (dot, dot, dot), and it is Option Command T because we set that up in Keyboard Shortcuts. So now with the file selected I can do Option Command T and this appears right there and I could easily type something and set it. I can use this to view the tags as well because it will show me those in there. I can use this to apply tags to multiple files as well. So red to both of those now. 
But the disadvantage is now I can't use Control 1, 2, or 3 to apply anything because there are no Favorites anymore. But Control Zero still works to get rid of all the tags. So if you use tags in the Finder I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Set Finder Tags With Keyboard Shortcuts and Other Methods”

Zebley Ed

2 years ago

I would like one or two real-life examples of useful ways to use Finder Tags. Are they only used at the file, level, or also at the folder level, etc.? I'm not sure I see their utility.

Gary Rosenzweig

Zebley: See these videos:
https://macmost.com/using-temporary-finder-tags-to-gather-files.html
https://macmost.com/how-to-use-tags-to-organize-your-files.html

Comments Closed.

Set Finder Tags With Keyboard Shortcuts and Other Methods

Comments: 2 Responses to “Set Finder Tags With Keyboard Shortcuts and Other Methods”

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