Ability to color folders in Finder GONE in Mavericks

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Level 2

200 points

Ability to color folders in Finder GONE in Mavericks

Over the years, one of my greatest frustrations with various versions of Windows is they never offered a simple means of highlighting certain important folders, such as by color, so they could be quickly discovered in a longer list of folders. The same for files... I always thought Windows was so silly to not do something that had been around in Mac OS seemingly forever, the ability to give one of several colors to Folders or files so they could be quickly discovered.

But oh my, I installed Mavericks yesterday and one of the first things I noticed is all my folder highlighting, which I use chronically and have so for years, has now been replaced by an almost impossible to see, tiny colored dot way off to the right side of the file or folder, the Apple invention called TAGS. Oh my...

I, for one, have already sent Feedback to Apple asking them to reconsider. I understand the TAG concept and that's all great but don't take away my ability to sort of prioritize folders by color... About having that go away, color me bummed...

bob..

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 8:51 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,620 points

Oct 23, 2013 9:10 PM in response to Robert Paris

While you can't easily see the little dot, you can select a tag in the sidebar and it will display all the files that have that tag.

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Answer 2

Robert Paris Author

Level 2

200 points

Oct 23, 2013 10:02 PM in response to Barney-15E

But consider this... I have a folder with say 100 sub-folders and files contained. Two of those folders I want to be able to see immediately as I access them all the time and I want them situated in alphabetical order.. With the old Finder colors and using List view, the entire line of those two folders stuck out and were real obvious. Now that's gone and at least for me, that's bad.

I tried what you suggested but that doesn't do what I said above... I just want those two folders (the entire lines) to show up quickly and obviously. To me, TAGS is something quite different buy Apple has chosen to sort of steal a highlighting method and converted it into a way to associate files/folders all over the Mac.

I've seen so far a few others who are missing the old Finder color highlighting like I am. Time will tell if enough folks miss it to get Apple's attention... I hope so...

For me, losing that highlighting capability is significant. Like I said, when I use Windows at work, I've always wondered why they wouldn't have long ago supplied that same highlighting capability that Apple had offered for a decade or more... But now Apple has taken it away too??? I am surprised...

bob...

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,620 points

Oct 24, 2013 4:52 AM in response to Robert Paris

Send feedback to Apple. I doubt anything will change back to what it was.

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Answer 4

Oct 24, 2013 3:26 PM in response to Robert Paris

We're going crazy in our office... 10 times harder to find files, folders, etc. The TAG system, cool, whatever, but the DOT at the end does little to nothing at atll in helping quickly differentiating different folders.

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Answer 5

Robert Paris Author

Level 2

200 points

Oct 24, 2013 5:00 PM in response to matthewfromwhite rock

Like I did, send feedback to apple and hope maybe they will hear us... The more who let them know, the better the chance they might give us back our folder color options.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

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Answer 6

Oct 25, 2013 11:32 AM in response to Robert Paris

I have a workaround that dates back to my days on the original Mac 128k.

Click on the folder, then Get Info. (Command-I).

Click on the icon for the folder in the top left of the window

Press command-C to copy the icon to the clipboard

Open your favorite image editor, and paste the folder icon.

Colorize or do whatever you like to the image, then copy back to the clipboard.

Switch back to the Info window for the folder. And click on the same icon in the top left.

Paste the image you modified and it will replace the icon.

You can just create a folder with a bunch of empty subfolders with all the colors you want, and simply copy and paste.

Not the optimal solution, but workarounds are just that.

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Answer 7

jnicklo

Level 1

5 points

Oct 25, 2013 11:59 AM in response to Robert Paris

This is incredibly frustrating. For the past several years I have used the highlighting folders that I need to quickly and easily find. If it aint broke, don't fix it Apple!

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Answer 8

jnicklo

Level 1

5 points

Oct 25, 2013 12:01 PM in response to Robert Paris

Feedback sent.

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Answer 9

Oct 25, 2013 12:27 PM in response to Robert Paris

I so agree with you. The little dot does me no good. I am a graphic designer for a cruise ship company and I make a lot of maps for all of our different itineraries and they are constantly being updated. I color the most recent version of each map so I can easily find it in a long list of files. Same thing with magazine ads—they are contantly being updated and I want to easily find the most recent version. Sorting by date modified doesn't help because, for some reason, my computer will tell me that a folder has been recently opened even when it hasn't.

I'm definitely sending feedback on this issue.

And tagging. Who has time to tag every file? If I did that, I'd get no work done.

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Answer 10

Oct 25, 2013 2:56 PM in response to Robert Paris

I thought I was alone in the wilderness, but I see that there are others who miss this feature. I love my Mac and Apple, but I also wish they would not just unilaterally remove features that useers rely on. The little dot is useless for my purposes.

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Answer 11

Robert Paris Author

Level 2

200 points

Oct 25, 2013 6:22 PM in response to RedpointRik

Again, as I and others said above, be sure and send Feedback to Apple.

Though don't reply to feedback but they do read what we submit, or at least so I'm told..

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

bob...

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Answer 12

Oct 25, 2013 7:00 PM in response to peteblossom

Tags can be used pretty much exactly the same as labels. You can select a ton of files, and apply the tag to them all at once.

Tags are superior in EVERY way to labels, with the lone exception of the fact that you just get a dot next to the file name, instead of getting the whole row colored.

You are assigning colors to your tags, right? Assign colors to tags, use the exact same tag names as your labels, and it "falls back" very nicely to a label-based system.

Except, if you want, you can do WAY MORE with tags.

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Answer 13

Robert Paris Author

Level 2

200 points

Oct 25, 2013 8:34 PM in response to William Lloyd

Let me offer an example. After installing Mavericks, the next day I paid a bill and I took a pdf of the statement and of the bill payment to the folder where I have two subfolders, one for payments, one for statements. There are also a ton of other folders and loose files in this same overarching folder.

My first and immediate reaction is "what happened to my clearly highlighted Payment and Statements folders??? (I used List view and in that view the entire line would have been colored under Labels. I hunted around until I finally found them and wondered what had happened to my oh so useful important file/folder highlighting. Then I noticed the two, almost imperceptibly small little colored dots way off to the right side. The TAGS.

So no, in practical terms, I don't agree that TAGS can be used pretty much exactly the same as labels. Labels were superb for highlighting. TAGS are not. They are barely visible sitting way out to the right as little pastel dots.

I already have a subpar workaround for folders. I will color or otherwise customize the folder icons. That I can do. But I also used highlighting a lot on loose files as well. For those I have no solution as yet...

I will just keep telling folks who agree that the loss of Labels is siginficant to keep sending Feedback to Apple and hope enough folks liked Labels to perhaps bring it back.

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Answer 14

Alancito

Level 7

27,382 points

Oct 27, 2013 6:44 AM in response to Robert Paris

Robert ~ This Folders Factory app allows you to easily change the color (and more) of folder icons:

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Answer 15

Robert Paris Author

Level 2

200 points

Oct 27, 2013 7:45 AM in response to Alancito

Yes, in fact I own that App and it does help highlight folders. Unfortunately, I also have numerous individual files which I also like to be able to find quickly with highlighting and I know of no way to highlight files now that Labels is no more... too bad... bob...

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