No more file chaos with color labels
You probably have come across color labels already in Finder. You can use them to assign a background color to a file, so it stands out from the others. This can help you to identify important files at a glance.
Today we will take this concept one step further and create a file and folder based To Do structure using color labels together with Smart Folders.
Ultimately you will get a list of files and folders you still need to work on, grouped by due date in nice, fresh colors.
Assigning a color label
Assigning a color label to a file is easy and straight forward. Control-click it and pick a color.
After you assigned a color label, files shows up in Finder with a colored background, allowing you to easily identify them.
Adjust the text connected to a label
As you assign color labels via the contextual menu, you see that there is text, connected to each color label. By default this text is the name of the color, but it’s easy to change it.
1) From the Finder menu, select Preferences
2) Go to the Labels tab and update the text associated with each label.
3) You can leave fields empty in case you don’t need all of them.
True power with Smart Folders
As said, color labels let you quickly identify files of a certain kind. The true power comes to light, when used in conjunction with the Smart Folders feature of Mac OS X.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the above labels (especially red and orange) to set up a ToDo list in Finder, highlighting all the files we need to work on within a certain time.
So, we have this starting position, three files - one is due today (red label) and two by the end of the week (orange label). All these files are in a directory in our home directory.
Now, let’s create a Smart Folder only showing those due by Friday. Doing so, we get a quick overview of what’s still left to do.
Create a Smart Folder based on color labels
1) In Finder, from the File menu, select New Smart Folder.
2) Since we know that our files are in our home folder, there is no need to search your entire Mac. So we limit the search to the home directory, by clicking the name of our home folder (next to “This Mac”).
Doing so will make the search much faster.
3) Now click the plus button to add new search criteria.
4) Instead of “Kind” pick Other to open up a list of other possibilities.
5) From this list select File Label.
Note: Click the checkbox for In Menu to add it to the drop down list and you don’t have to pick Other every time.
6) Click the orange label to show all files with an orange color label. With the search limited to your home folder, the results should show up almost instantly.
7) Save these search results as a Smart Folder by clicking Save in the upper right corner.
Give it a descriptive name, say “Due by Friday” and check Add to Sidebar, so you have the files you need to work on, always at hand.
8) - Repeat from step 1 with the red color label to get files you need to work on today.
Usage in real life
After you finished working on a file or folder, control-click it and select a different color or remove the color label. The content of the Smart Folder will be updated immediately, showing only those files you still need to work on.
This is why Smart Folders are called Smart Folders: because their content updates on-the-fly depending on the search criteria you defined before.
This is a method of adding extra information to your files, which can really improve the speed of finding stuff on your Mac. Less time navigating your directory structures means more time to get things done.
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Tags: color labels, data, finder, productivity, Smart Folder
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