Are you using tags?

[Semester]

I was very excited about tags when Mavericks was announced. But now a month after I downloaded Mavericks I still haven't used tags. Not because I didn't like them, I just haven't come to use them. I know they would be great for organizing my files but for whatever reason I haven't done it yet.

Are you using tags on Mavericks?

 

[Jambalaya]

Yes, using them all the time for new files. Need to get motivated to tag existing files. Very useful for searching.

 

[techpr]

Yes, using it on new files. It takes time to get used but very useful.

 

[ufkdo]

I am with you. Although I think it is very useful, I have never used it just because I am not accustomed to it I have organized/am organizing my files quite carefully, plus I have spotlight to find my files. These are holding me back to use tags.

 

[WillFisher]

Being at university with lots of different lectures and lecturers going around, lots of different topics and points of study, I find them very useful when searching through files. I must have created, 50 tags?

 

[xgman]

I voted no, BUT I need the old "colored labels" back.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5474093?start=0&tstart=0

 

[w0lf]

I voted no, BUT I need the old "colored labels" back.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5474093?start=0&tstart=0

Buy one of the 3rd party finder extensions that still support color tags or downgrade to ML.

 

[Manic Harmonic]

Buy one of the 3rd party finder extensions that still support color tags or downgrade to ML.

I would gladly pay for a third party extension that brings this back to mavericks. Do you have a link?

 

[GlenK]

^^Me too!!!

 

[Appledict]

absolutely yes. when I download a movie or tv episode, I tag them as watchable (green), wathced and ready to copy to my hdd (red), and watched but not finished (yellow).

I use them a bit different way but who cares I'm happy.

 

[diogolg]

I really like the tags, altought took me a while to know the best way to use them... The only problem is that tags do not have hierarchy so if you have a lot of tags things can get messy, because of that I'm using them now just to organize some papers for college

 

[robgendreau]

Colored labels have become incorporated into Mavericks tags, so if you used them, might behoove you to just use a tag with a name rather than just the color. Especially since you'll have a very limited number of colors. And since tag strings can have more than one color, you may get a mess if you're not disciplined. And the color per se isn't spotlight indexed, but the name of it "green" is. All probably more confusing if you assigned names to your labels.

In any case, I don't think Mavericks really does much to make people wanna using tagging, which can be very powerful, especially given the limitations of the file system Apple uses. And its one way out of the primitive outdated desktop metaphor they've now been stuck in for over a generation. Take a look at applications like Yep, Leap, Default Folder X, DevonThink, MailTags, HoudahSpot and others to see what tagging can really do.

Fer instance, I can link all my client's info with a tag with her name: emails, pictures, contact cards, Word documents, websites, etc. Given the diversity of file formats, it would be impractical if not impossible to keep all that in a folder called "client."

And see this part of a Mavericks review if you wanna know more:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/

 

[w0lf]

I would gladly pay for a third party extension that brings this back to mavericks. Do you have a link?

^^Me too!!!

http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/

http://binarynights.com/forklift/

http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ ( doesn't currently but should eventually get support: http://discuss.binaryage.com/t/wish-return-finder-labels-to-mavericks/662 )

http://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/ (shows labels in side bar only)

 

[Manic Harmonic]

Thanks for the links. Totalfinder is one of those apps I absolutely can't love without, so I would love to see label support added as well.

 

[grahamperrin]

Various

In answer to the poll: never. See below.

… I decided to reinstall Mavericks from scratch. I backed up all my data and installed Mavericks, choosing to download all my Tagged files from Dropbox. Little did I know that Dropbox does NOT sync extended attributes. UGH! …

I might have been amongst the customers who reported that problem to Dropbox.

Backblaze announced readiness for Mavericks before the Backblaze product was truly ready.

… when I installed the Yep app, it restored all my tags from the metadata store it maintains, independent of the underlying OS …

Wow, I wasn't aware of that capability. At Support : Ironic Software I see that it's also a feature of Leap.

You should try a tagging system. …

… I am using tagging systems, but not to their full potential. Im in the process of updating my usage habits to take better advantage of OS X. …(

I love the capabilities of Leap.

However, what seems to be a bug in Mavericks causes tagging to fail completely with an encrypted sparse bundle disk image … and the HFS Plus file system in that image was the one that I most wanted/needed to tag.

The bug was reported to Apple and if it's relevant: the .sparsebundle is stored on an external hard disk drive on USB 2.0.

 

[Traverse]

However, what seems to be a bug in Mavericks causes tagging to fail completely with an encrypted sparse bundle disk image … and the HFS Plus file system in that image was the one that I most wanted/needed to tag.

The bug was reported to Apple and if it's relevant: the .sparsebundle is stored on an external hard disk drive on USB 2.0.

Oh, somehow I missed this quote.

Tags are still finicky. I booted OS X Yosemite from an external USB drive to test something and while using it I mounted my internal (Mavericks) drive. Well, once I finished and booted back into Mavericks (with the Yosemite drive disconnected) all my tags were gone and overwritten by the default "Red," "Yellow," etc.

I haven't tested tags with iCloud Drive, but so far it isn't ideal between machines with different tags.

 

[S.B.G]

To add, I have only a couple of documents where I tagged them. They're in an encrypted volume I made with True Crypt and stored in my Dropbox directory. The tags remain on the files when I decrypt/encrypt them, but if I make a change to the file and save it, the next time I go to it, decrypt it, the tag is removed.

 

[grahamperrin]

A possible transient workaround for disappearance of tags

… all my tags were gone

Please try the following:

• start Mavericks in single user mode
• use fsck_hfs(8) with -Ra (option R, flag a) to rebuild the extended attributes B-tree
• expect the rebuild to be followed by an automated check that repairs minor file system inconsistencies
• expect the repair to be followed by an automated check that describes the file system as apparently OK
• refrain from rebooting the operating system
• type exit
• see whether your tags are found in any context.

If the tags that previously disappeared are present at step (g), please treat the workaround as transient. Restarting the operating system may cause symptoms of the bug to reappear.

and overwritten by the default "Red," "Yellow," etc. …

Side note: those may be traditional labels (not tags).

 

[Traverse]

Please try the following:

Thank you for this, I've saved this post for reference.

I already manually rebuilt my tags (because this incident was about a month ago), but I will still be testing Yosemite and if it occurs again I will try this and let you know how it works.

 

[grahamperrin]

KDE and The Semantic Desktop (2013-03-13)

That's not OS X, but there's discussion of tags. And the implementation is comparable: storage as extended attributes.

Amongst the first comments to the blog post, http://vhanda.in/blog/2015/03/the-semantic-desktop-is-dead/#comment-1906427079

"I think one of the big mistakes with the semantic desktop (as it was implemented) was that it assumes that users actually takes time to tag their files, photos and so on. From my experience most users just save things on "Desktop" or in "Documents" and then spend the time it takes to browse and search when they need something. I am yet to meet a user (including myself) that actively tags things. …:​

Back to OS X (and iOS): the 'Location independent files' patent might have the potential to simplify storage – particularly for users of notebooks and other mobile devices – but if a majority of data is habitually non-tagged, then things might be not as simple as Apple would like.

 

[Royksöpp]

 

[grahamperrin]

Name | Tags | Where

"Ain't nobody got time for that"

I empathise, but Apple encourages their use.

Name:
Tags:
Where:​