Say I have two tags, "Green", and "Green 1".
How do I replace all instances of the "Green 1" tag with the "Green" tag, across all files on my device?
MacOS – How to replace a tag with another tag system-wide
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Related Solutions
There are infinite combinations since you can add your own custom tags, therefore you can have as many tags as you wish and therefore as many tag combinations as you wish.
Organising your files with tags is down to personal preference, but personally I use custom tags for projects and custom-named tags with colour for important/completed/etc.
My current main tag list is as follows:
I usually combine these with the project- or context-specific tag if it is a single file or package, or use the project/context tag on the folder and these general tags on the files themselves.
- Issued sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/External-SSD” and got back "Indexing and searching disabled.” for external HDD.
- Defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true ; killall Finder (shows all file)
- Go to hdd where indexing is not working. externalssd in my case. find locate .metadata_never_index & delete it.
- sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/External-SSD” started spotlight indexing and indexes are created.
- Tags working now.
This concludes that Tag functionality is dependant on spotlight and needs to be enabled.
Best Answer
I've had two 'Green' tags, though with slightly different names for quite some time, so I thought I'd see if I could find a workaround.
Best I can come up with is in effect a find, add, remove. Fortunately it turns out I'd only a few 'other Green' so it was quite quick, but you can almost see the Finder 'thinking' as it ticks through them all.
From Finder Prefs>Tags, make sure both are ticked & then drop both your 'Greens' into the favourites at the bottom, circled. You can only have 5 at once, so others will be removed. You can re-add afterwards. Leave this window open, you'll be coming back to it.
Open a Finder window & select your 'to be deleted' tag in the sidebar, to list all the files tagged with it. Mine was called 'In Queue'
Cmd ⌘ A to Select All.
Right click & assign the other green tag to the files, so they now have both tags.
Give the Finder time to finish - you can see it adding the second green dot…
Then - right click again & remove your unwanted tag.
Everything is now tagged with the single, wanted, Green tag.
Go back to Finder prefs & you can delete the extra tag altogether.