Create, customise and search tags

Finding the files you want is made a lot easier by using advanced searches to filter out items that you are not interested in.

1 Create custom tags

Finder’s tags are meant to be customised. Go to Finder>preferences>tags and click the ‘+’ button to add your own. Tick the ones you want to appear in Finder.

2 Colour and favourite

Click the circle next to your custom tags and select a colour. Drag custom tags down to Favourite Tags at the bottom and drop them on a colour to replace it.

3 Assign tags

Select one or more files and add a tag using the File menu or Tags button in Finder’s toolbar. More than one tag can be assigned to a file by clicking them in the menu.

4 View file tags

In Finder’s List view, Ctrl+click any of the column headers and tick Tags to show the column. This shows the text of the tags, which means more than a coloured blob.

5 Sort by tag

Sort files and folders with tags assigned to them by the tag to make them easier to find. Click the Tags column header to sort A-Z or Z-A by the first tag assigned.

6 Search for tags

Files and folders with tags assigned to them can be found with a search. Click in the search box and enter tag: followed by the name of the tag. Click ‘Tags’ below.