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Finder color tags not working

Everything in Mavericks seems to be working great except for the Finder color tags. I can tag files just fine, but when I go to the actual tag in the sidebar none of the files I tagged show up.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 7:44 AM

Reply
25 replies

Nov 19, 2013 2:33 AM in response to mann.ajeet

Well I can see tags from all the files I had tagged before I installed Mavericks - and they are on an external server - but if I try and make a new tag, the coloured button shows up for a few seconds then disappears but if I change the view to 'tags' it shows the new tagged file as tagged.


When I tag a file on an external drive or on my Mac however, it stays visible.


Not sure how Apple can make something that is simple and works easily into something that is complicated and doesn't work.


Is anyone from Apple listening to this?

Jan 21, 2015 12:23 AM in response to mann.ajeet

Recently Finder tags stopped working for me too. Re-indexing helps for a little while but then the problem soon comes back. By the way, it's not related to the location of files in any way. I'm on Yosemite, MBP (late 2011). Actually Finder seems quite a bit buggy lately, and I often have to relaunch Finder to get it working properly. Unfortunately that doesn't solve the tags issue...


Edit: just found out that searching for tags in spotlight does work, while clicking in the sidebar reveals no files.

Jun 24, 2016 5:48 PM in response to mann.ajeet

Finder tags need Spotlight to work, so I'm guessing you might have it disabled for some reason.


To re-enable Spotlight, you'll have to do so from the terminal using the

mdutil
command:


sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist


or try:

sudo mdutil -a -i on


If in case you do run across the error "Operation is already in progress", then follow the instructions at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6794027?tstart=0

Aug 19, 2016 12:57 PM in response to mann.ajeet

I had a similar problem. In any directory display the tags did appear on the left hand side but without the name tags I had given them They would not display the corresponding files either. I checked spotlight but it was fully enabled.


Here's what I did that solved the problem. I picked a random file on my desktop, right clicked it and then the named tags appeared in the info panel. I assigned the random file to each of the tags. When I went back to a directory display all my named tags were back but without the right colours. All I had to do was reset the colours. The original tag associations to files that I had set up returned! Later I removed the tag associations from the random file. This solution was based on luck!!!


This worked .... but WHY do we have to do things like this with such a sophisticated OS??????

Finder color tags not working

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