Name                    
 Parent Directory

	

Making Finder Labels Useful

In the Mac finder, you can apply a label to any file. There are seven labels, named for colors:

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and Gray

In their default state, these labels are marginally useful and few people employ them. However, simply by renaming them we can make them much more useful.

★★★★★ 
★★★★
★★★
★★
★
Selected
Done

To rename them, type cmd-comma in the Finder, and then click on "Labels".

You can copy the stars from this page and paste them into the dialog box, or you can go into the Character Viewer under Bullets/Stars. You can open the Character Viewer right now by typing cmd-alt-t.

Hint: if you look under Emoji in the Character Viewer, you can find a yellow star.

Rating Files

Now, you have an easy way to rate files. You can open up a folder of photos in Cover Flow, zoom in and just click to rate them, one after the other.

For example, we took a tour of a vineyard a couple of weeks ago. I took about 500 photos. I'd like to put a small collection on Facebook, but there are far too many. So, I go through the photos and give them star ratings.

Then at the end, I can create a new album in Facebook using only the four- and five-star photos.

Selected & Done

Selected and Done are useful whenever you are doing things to several files and you need to mark them as (surprise) selected or done.

For example, you need to convert a season's worth of Friends episodes using Handbrake, in order to watch them on your iPad. How do you know which ones you've already converted? You just choose the label "Done".

Or, you have 200 photos from a day trip to the coast. You'd like to email a couple to your mother. So you go through the photos quickly, marking the good ones as "Selected". Then, when you send your email, it's easy to find the ones you want.

The only problem with this system is that Apple's implementation of the Labels is ugly.

© 2017 · top · more