Understanding Smart Folders, Albums, Mailboxes and Playlists

When using smart folders or albums it is important to realize what they are. Items are not "in" a smart folder or album. They are simply the results of a search. The items remain where they were. You can't delete items from a smart folder or album because that wouldn't make sense.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me explain how Smart Folders and Smart Albums work on your Mac. 
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So I often get questions about Smart Folders in the Finder and Smart Albums in the Photos and Music apps. Often people have a misunderstanding of exactly what these Smart Folders and Albums are about. So, for instance, here in the Finder I'm just looking at my files here in the Documents folder. I just see the files where they are at. Here are the folders in the Documents folder. Here are files inside of folders in the Documents folder. This is where this file is located. It's located in the Documents Folder in the Business Folder. That's the file.
But what if I were to create a Smart Folder. I go to File, then new Smart Folder, and then with the Smart Folder you give it some criteria and then it will form a search and show you the results. So I'm going to add something here and I'm going to say let's have the last modified date within the last 7 days. It will give me a variety of files where that statement is true. I can continue to add more here and modify this and create a complex set of criteria for this Smart Folder. When I'm done I can click Save here and I can save the Smart Folder wherever I want. I could add it to the special Saved Searches folder which technically tucks it out of the way and then you have it in the Sidebar or I can put it somewhere else, like for instance I'lll just have it on the Desktop here. I'll just call it New Smart Folder. Save and there's my new Smart Folder. When I double click on it to open it it's going to show me all of the files that have been modified in the last 7 days. So it may look different on different days because things will get older, new files will be modified, and so on. But it's always going to show me the files that fit that description. 
But, are the files actually in here. Like, for instance, is the Photo1.jpeg actually in New Smart Folder. The answer is No. It's not in here at all. Where is it? Well, it's in iCloud Drive.documents.images. In other words if I go to my Documents folder, look in Images, that's where the file actually is. It isn't in the Smart Folder at all. The Smart Folder is just showing me search results. Search results that are updated every time I look in there. 
Here's another way to look at it. You can see here a list of all your files. You can see they're arranged in folders and subfolders. So I have files 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8, 12, 13 all in the Documents Folder. But I also have a folder in there called Folder A and there are 3 files in that. There's another folder in there called Folder B and there are 3 files in that. This is the actual location of all these files. Now if I were to create a Smart Folder and say the criteria for that Smart Folder was Files Modified in the Last 7 Days, I might get this as a result. File 1, 4, 7, 12. That's because its those files that fit that definition. But the files aren't actually in that Folder called My Smart Folder. They are not there at all. This is just showing me a list and what I see there really can be defined as links to the actual files in their actual location. So none of those four files are actually in that Smart Folder. They're in their actual folder in the Documents Folder right where they were before you created the Smart Folder. The Smart Folder doesn't move anything around. If you remove the Smart Folder, delete it completely, it doesn't change these files at all. They are still there in their original locations where they have always been. 
So it is not correct to say anything is IN a Smart Folder. To make it clearer you may want to think of it as a files appears in a Smart Folder. 
Another thing I'm often asked is how can I remove a file from a Smart Folder. So say you want to remove file 4 from a Smart Folder here. Well, you can't because file 4 fits the definition of that Smart Folder. It's been modified in the last 7 days. The only way it is going to be gone from that Smart Folder is if you delete it entirely from your drive so it is just not a file there anymore or it's last modified date becomes older than 7 days. Then it won't fit that definition anymore. If you wanted to see File 1,7,12 together in a Smart Folder and not 4 then technically what you're looking for is a Smart Folder that says Give Me Files Modified in the Last 7 Days but not named File 4 or some other thing that defines File 4. The fact that file 4 has been modified in the last 7 days is just a fact about it and all Smart Folders are doing is giving you a list of files that have certain facts that are true about them. 
Now let's look at the Photos App. In the Photos App you have a library of photos. This is actually a flat structure. All of your photos are just in the library. There are no folders inside of a library. They are all just there at the top level starting with the earliest photo you've taken and ending with the most recent one you've taken. It is just one big list of photos. Now before we start talking about Smart Albums, let's talk about regular albums because photos and music don't actually have folders. At least not these kinds of folders. In Photos you have something called Albums. Albums are a lot like Smart Albums except you manually pick every photo or song that goes in them. So you can create an album called My Album, for instance, and manually put photos 1, 4, 6, 8 in that album. Now just like Smart Albums those items aren't actually in that album. The album is just like a list of links that actually refers to the different photos. 
Now, of course, in the Music App these aren't called albums. Albums refer to the old term of a record album. But in the Music App they are called Playlists. You can create Playlists in the Music App just like you can create albums in the Photos App. Now you can have more than one album or playlist. So here I've got Album A and Album B. In Album A I have 4 photos and in Album B I have 3 photos. Just to drive home the point that the photos aren't actually in these albums, they're just links to them, I can have one photo, Photo 8 that appears in both Album A and Album B. This is impossible with, say, folders in the Finder. A file is in only one folder. It only has one location. The same thing with Photos. It only has one location. That's in the big list of Photos in the Photos Library. But an album in Photos can link to different photos and you can link to the same photo from different albums. So in this case maybe Album A is my trip to Hawaii. In Album B is pictures of sunsets. Photo 8 happens to be a picture of a sunset that I took during my trip to Hawaii. So I placed it in both albums. But photo 8 is in neither Album A or Album B. It just appears there. Photo 8 is really in the Photo Library. In just that one place.
Now, of course, in Photos you can have albums and in Music you can have playlists. But you could also have Smart Albums and Smart Playlists in those places. In this case those work just like Smart Folders. So here I've got a Smart Album and it is defined as the photo is a panorama. So that applies to photo 10, 11, 14. So I've got my album that I've created where I've manually added Photo 1, 4, 6, 8 to it. I can take one of those out. I can add another one in. I can manually add and remove photos directly from my album. But the Smart Album, that's a definition. The photo has to be a panorama and the definition fits three photos. The only way I can add another one to that Smart Album is if I took another photo that happens to be a panorama. The only way I can remove one is to delete it entirely from the library. Because as long as it is in the library and it is a panorama it's going to fit the definition of that Smart Album and appear there. 
Now there is a fourth place that we're going to find Smart things. That's in the Mail App. You have Smart Mailboxes there. Smart Mailboxes work just like Smart Folders and Smart Albums. You define something about mail messages. Like they are from a certain person for instance. Then they would automatically appear in the Smart Mailbox. But nothing is actually in it. It just links to the location of that item. Regular mailboxes work differently depending upon the service you use though. For instance gmail has the scheme known as Labels. Each message can have one or more labels applies to it. So you can actually have one message in gmail that has two labels and in the Mac Mail App it appears in two mailboxes, because mailboxes really are labels. But if you're using, say, iCloud or maybe a corporate email service then mailboxes are actual locations and a message can only be in one mailbox at a time. But Smart Mailboxes work the same regardless. Just finding messages that fit certain criteria and putting them in there. You can't remove messages from a Smart Mailbox because it is just a definition. If that message fits the definition it's going to be shown there. 
So before you had trouble with the concept of Smart Folders, Smart Albums, and Smart Mailboxes. I hope this clears things up for you. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 10 Responses to “Understanding Smart Folders, Albums, Mailboxes and Playlists”

Anders Kempe

11 months ago

Hej Gary,
Thanks for the clear description about smart xyz on the Mac.
But, this doesn’t apply to the iPhone/iPad e.g. smart albums in Photos.
Please, add a comment about this, and also a separate video how to manage/sync smar albums.
Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

Anders: Yes, the iPhone version of Photos is missing Smart Albums. Hopefully they will add it one day.

Don R.

Thanks Gary, excellent clarification and description of smart folders. This will undoubtedly help my organizing of files photos and songs.

Jeff Davis

Love all your videos. How do I delete a smart folder?
Thanks a bunch

Jeff: Do you mean from its location in a folder, or do you mean in the Finder sidebar? If the former, just drag to the Trash like any other file. If the latter, Control+click and use the context menu or drag it far enough away and you'll see an X.

Bill

Does the search area need to be Indexed by Spotlight in order to create a Smart Folder for it?

Bill: Yes.

Kelly

A fifth place where you can use Smart List is the Contacts application.

Gregg Lovan

2 months ago

Gary. It looks to me like if I'm cleaning up a Smart Folder so that I just have what I want in it, like batch deleting all the old files, its gone forever. I tried it on a file and its gone. So is there a way to 'clean up' a Smart Folder so all the junk is gone? If the criteria still apply, otherwise, every time you delete a file, it would pop back up.

Gregg: That's right. A Smart Folder is a search result. Those are the actual files you see there, even though they are not located there. A Smart Folder is not a location. Those aren't duplicates of those files. So if you delete the file there, it is the the same as searching for a file and then deleting it.
You can't clean up a Smart Folder in that way. It is a search result. If your Smart Folder shows you all of your Pages documents from the last 30 days, you can't remove a file from there that is a Pages document from the last 30 days. By definition that file IS a Pages document and it IS from the last 30 days, so it will be in that list.
I'm not sure what it is you are trying to do with Smart Folders, but if what you want to see is not a list of files that meet a specific definition, then Smart Folders is not the right tool.

Understanding Smart Folders, Albums, Mailboxes and Playlists

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