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Why does tags only work on internal drives?
- Thread starter oström
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Works for me. There does appear to be a bug though because it doesn't appear to want to show the dot next to the name (everything else about the tag works fine). I'd imagine this is just a bug that will get sorted out sooner or later before GM.
(also tagging works on my my shared exFAT drive so I don't think there is an HFS restriction for tagging either.)
(also tagging works on my my shared exFAT drive so I don't think there is an HFS restriction for tagging either.)
Agreed. Tags seem to work properly on any Spotlight-indexed drive, internal or external. I'm not running any exFAT drives, so I can't test them, but if Spotlight indexes them, they should work.
As an aside, I'm running Paragon NTFS for Mac--which seems to work perfectly under Mavericks--and although I can apply tags to files on an NTFS drive, and they are persistent, since Spotlight won't index the NTFS drive, tagged files on NTFS drives don't show up when you select a matching tag.
As an aside, I'm running Paragon NTFS for Mac--which seems to work perfectly under Mavericks--and although I can apply tags to files on an NTFS drive, and they are persistent, since Spotlight won't index the NTFS drive, tagged files on NTFS drives don't show up when you select a matching tag.
So tagging works at the Spotlight level? I mean I guess I should've known, but I don't know why Apple is still using HFS+ instead of developing a modern filesystem that has tagging at the FS level instead of way up in the software stack. What happens if your Spotlight DB gets hosed? Do these get backed up with TimeMachine?
The files themselves seem to be tagged from what others have said. So if you have to rebuild the spotlight database, the tags should be maintained.
What spotlight does is allow you to search on tags.
Probably an xattr:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/xattr.1.html
Someone running Mavericks could post the output from the 'xattr' command, or 'ls -l@ ' of some tagged files.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. Excuse my ignorance, but are these xattr blobs actually written/copied around with a file? So if I email foo.jpg to Joe, the 'bar' tag will be intact on his system? Or are they specific to only my OS X install?
A file's xattrs are usually copied under OS X. Both Finder copying and command-line copying (i.e. 'cp') do this by default.
Some command-line archiving tools (e.g. cpio, tar) may or may not preserve xattrs. You'd have to look at the man page for each tool. Personally, I'd also run some tests using files that are known to have xattrs.
Try it; see what happens.
A file's xattrs may or may not pass through email. A compressed archive, such as one made using Finder, probably will transfer all xattrs. It's possible, however, that the Mavericks Finder will strip some xattrs when decompressing an archive. To be sure, try it and see what happens.
I don't have Mavericks installed; I only have iOS Dev accounts, not OS X. Hence the questions.
Hm, seems like an important distinction. Also, it would seem unfortunate if Joe and I were both working on a file, and when I sent the file to him and he overwrote his existing file with mine, it blew away his own tags on the file with mine. This is why I feel that putting tags into the files themselves is not a great solution.
Tags are part of the file.
Copying a file with tags from one machine running Mavericks to another will not only keep the tags but also add the tags into your tags. Tag colors won't transfer though, I'd imagine that's saved in a Finder plist file or something.