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While I agree with the general sentiment that the mental model of tags is more complex and discovering the right tags is a bigger challange than slapping some tag onto some file, I don't see it as something that needs to replace a traditional file system.

Tags are more useful for certain types of files than others. E.g. let's say you want to mark certain projects done. Instead of moving them to a done folder you can just add tags to them – without changing any paths you change their status.

Tags are also quite useful for pictures, music and other media content.

I never really got, why even in 2019 there is not good support for tags on most desktops.



macOS' Finder has had tag support for some time.

That's ~10% of desktops in the world (and 1 of the 3 "mainstream" desktop OS out there, counting linux)

I'm too much of a mess to use them, but they're there.


Windows has had file tagging since at least XP. Not a lot of people use them (probably because the UI for it is hard to discover), but I have used stuff like royalty-free photo libraries that have searchable tags.

Here's a reference: https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file...


The problem is that it can only tag those files that provide data structures for tagging like IPTC and EXIF

You can't tag the plain text notes that you write about the holiday you had or the bitmap that you created from one of the jpegs.


I'm not familiar with Windows file tagging, but on MacOS this is not true. Any and all files may be tagged, regardless of their type or contents.


What happens if you move or copy a file?


Moving and duplicating both preserve the tags: they're metadata. They're part of the reason for those pesky .DS_Store files that proliferate on network shares and non-Mac filesystems, in fact.


The problem is that it can only tag those files that provide data structures for tagging like IPTC and EXIF

You can't tag the notes that you write about the holiday you had.


Yeah, they had it back in OS9




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