Can't remove tags from files

Is Finder crashing or you just can't do anything else with it?

Might be a corrupt .plist.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.

Re-launch Finder by restarting the computer and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

Select a one, or multiple of the files/folder that you believe have these transparent tags assigned to them. Right-click on one of these items, and click the Tags… menu item. All unique tag names will appear as follows:

Place your cursor behind the last tag that is shown, and press the backspace key to remove them. Finish with a return, and all of these transparent tags are now gone from the selected filesystem objects.

Launchpad : Other : Script Editor

Copy/paste the following into Script Editor, click the hammer icon, and then run it. A prompt will appear for the tagged file whose tags you want to remove. The tag(s) are removed, and Finder will show the file again sans tags.

-- remove_tags.applescript

--

-- Removes all tags associated with the File selected in Finder.

-- VikingOSX, 2017-05-05, Apple Support Communities

property aloc : (path to desktop as text) as alias

property msg : "Enter the file whose tag you wish to remove."

set tagfile to POSIX path of (choose filewith promptmsgdefault locationaloc ¬

without multiple selections allowed, invisibles and showing package contents) as text

do shell script "xattr -d com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags " & tagfile

do shell script "xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo " & tagfile

tell application "Finder" to revealitem (tagfile as POSIX file)

return

If you are satisfied that the script does what you need, you can then save it initially as a text format applescript (e.g. tag_remove.applescript), and then with option+File menu : Save As... — you can save it in a script or application format (e.g. scpt, scptd, .app) for subsequent usage.