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Sounds like we do similar organization, though I avoid Tags and use Keywords, which I prefer primarily because they can be embedded in many files types and can be more numerously assigned. Regardless, for much of your work assigning Tags and organizing files, have a look at Hazel for automating these tasks. And yes, it can read the contents of Pages files.

https://www.noodlesoft.com

I did briefly look at Hazel, I think at this point it would likely be unnecessary.

I already have my app which has the custom code to work with the API of my web app and set tags accordingly, at that point it would honestly be trivial to have it go through all of the subdirectories of a folder. I would be quite surprised if I could have Hazel query an API, parse the json, loop through it, and then tag based on the various values.

Unless it solves my last issue? I did not think it did when I looked at it, since that is more a limitation of the smart folder filter than anything else.

That being said, I am confused by the difference between keywords and tags? Since on Mac a tag can be put on any file, folder, etc and doesn't care about the filetype. A single tag can be on any number of files/folders and a file/folder can have as many tags as I want (at least seemingly, I have not seen a limit yet).

When you say keywords, are you just referring to using certain... well keywords... in the filenames?

>Unless it solves my last issue? I did not think it did when I looked at it, since that is more a limitation of the smart folder filter than anything else.

I don't believe Hazel will solve that last issue, but I may be off about that and you're certainly more skilled than I am.

>When you say keywords, are you just referring to using certain... well keywords... in the filenames?

Keywords are not in the file name, they're embedded in a file's metadata. For example, do a Print to PDF of a web page, but in the last dialog where you can save, note there's a Keyword field. Add something there that's unique, then search on it with Spotlight. Have lots of Keywords in use? Then Spotlight can use a keyword:[search term] search, similar to how there are many other built-in search queries.

My primary setup is to have Hazel monitor specific files in specific folders looking for specific content within those files. Based on the results, Hazel runs my Automator Actions to embed the Keywords I want (especially helpful for organizing my business files, but I have plenty of other uses, like Hazel filing documents based on the Keywords I added when using Print to PDF).

Ultimately, it sounds like you have a solid system accomplishing most of what you want done. Certainly no need to redo a viable setup. I was just hoping Hazel could help with the Pages files, and maybe secondarily some other parts of your process.

> Keywords are not in the file name, they're embedded in a file's metadata. For example, do a Print to PDF of a web page, but in the last dialog where you can save, note there's a Keyword field. Add something there that's unique, then search on it with Spotlight. Have lots of Keywords in use? Then Spotlight can use a keyword:[search term] search, similar to how there are many other built-in search queries.

Ah I see now. If I understand properly, I can see the value in this if you are setting a ton of keywords across multiple systems, and you don't really want those to muck up your finder window or list of tags.

Out of curiosity I went to the save as pdf, and tag is also there. Honestly never noticed either being there.

I wonder why tags on Mac isn't just a layer built on top of keywords if that is already there. Tags are even available in smart folder filters.

Thanks for mentioning that, I think I might honestly use both. Since I use some tags for project status. So things like "research" "production" , etc etc. Things that are actually valuable as tags on my sidebar to quickly filter with. I even have colors associated with those to a quick glance at my folder.

But being able to add a keyword for each project would also be beneficial. It doesn't muck up my sidebar.

Keywords are more widely available than may be obvious. TextEdit accepts them, Preview in its Inspector panel, Photoshop has a field, Word and Excel did (do?) in File > Properties, and many others. I’m not near a Mac with Pages so I can speak to that app. And just like Tags, Keywords can be used with Smart Folders.

So I feel like this is a stupid question, but how do you add keywords to an existing file or folder? Like from Finder or the terminal.

That is the use case I am trying to do. I won’t ever be in a situation of saving a file with a keyword. The entire idea of my automation is that I don’t manage these tags/keywords myself.

I tried last night to do this, but I couldn’t figure out how. And googling didn’t help since every article just assumed I was talking about tags.

Edit: Also after some experimentation I think I am still not really understanding the value of keywords vs tags.

I guess the biggest is likely since it is a common and standard metadata that it works across platforms and not just within the Apple ecosystem?

You mention TextEdit, and Word. In both cases when I go to save a file since it uses the Mac native file save UI, the second box is tags.

You are right that in Word if I go to properties, I see Keywords and not tags. It is not clear to me if this is a limitation of Tags or just an oversight in the application. I was curious so I took an image, added a tag and opened it in preview. And the inspector panel does not show the tag.

So it seems like a bit of a tradeoff, with keywords you get metadata on the file itself that is very portable to any system. But being able to view the tags is limited to applications.

With tags, I assume this data is stored on the file itself (later today I will need to try to look at one of these files on my NAS and see if it can see the tags or not) but the applications don't show it (Apple's own application not showing it is kinda weird honestly) but you can manage and view tags from finder.

Sorry for the delay here, nerdjon. I hope this gets to you.

>...how do you add keywords to an existing file or folder? Like from Finder or the terminal.

As far as I'm aware, a folder can't have a Keyword assigned to it. Adding Keywords to files from the Terminal... I'm too Terminal-ignorant to help with that, but there should be a way. Many years ago — I've been on the Keyword bandwagon since before Tags were available — I found a way to bulk delete a Keyword from a bunch of files using a Terminal command. Since Keywords are often uncommon in most people's setups, it may help to search for other Spotlight-visible metadata that can be assigned to files from the Terminal, as it may then be a case of replacing that parameter with keyword in the command.

Most of my Keywords get assigned to files using Hazel. Hazel watches certain folders, looks for certain criteria, then runs Automator Workflows I've made which add the Keywords. If I need to more manually add Keywords, I have those same Automator Workflows in the form of Services, which are available from the the Finder Contextual Menu.

>That is the use case I am trying to do. I won’t ever be in a situation of saving a file with a keyword. The entire idea of my automation is that I don’t manage these tags/keywords myself.

Sorry to sound like a product shill, but that's why I rely on Hazel. It does the bulk of the work for me assigning Keywords. Just to describe what that means, let's say I get PDF invoices from five vendors. They go to the Downloads folder that I've set Hazel to monitor, Hazel looks for specific content in the PDFs (usually something like an account number or remittance address), then runs the specific Automator Workflows assigning the Keywords I want on each invoice, and finally Hazel moves the PDFs where I want them.

>I guess the biggest [keyword value] is likely since it is a common and standard metadata that it works across platforms and not just within the Apple ecosystem?

Agreed. And to me the greatest value in that isn't in sharing files with others — what are the odds a Windows user will care what Keyword I've assigned to a file? — it's that the copies of my files that are backed up to cloud services retain the Keywords. Second to that, the biggest value for me in Keywords over Tags is that I can easily add as many as I want.

>You mention TextEdit, and Word. In both cases when I go to save a file since it uses the Mac native file save UI, the second box is tags.

In TextEdit, File > Show Properties is where Keywords are added (to RTFs, etc., but not .txt files).

>You are right that in Word if I go to properties, I see Keywords and not tags. It is not clear to me if this is a limitation of Tags or just an oversight in the application.

I believe that's an app limitation, but I'm not running anything near the latest macOS or Word.

>I was curious so I took an image, added a tag and opened it in preview. And the inspector panel does not show the tag.

But the Magnifying Glass section of the Inspector Panel will accept Keywords. Tags, as far as I'm aware, are meant for Finder and may largely (completely?) be limited to places like that (aka, the iOS Files app also), but not for within apps.

>So it seems like a bit of a tradeoff, with keywords you get metadata on the file itself that is very portable to any system. But being able to view the tags is limited to applications.

Just like Tags, you can create Smart Folders in the Finder for Keywords. Or a Smart Folder for files with Tag:Red and Keyword:InProgress. That kind of flexibility is definitely a great feature of Smart Folders.

I hope this helps. I'm not out to convince you to switch from what sounds like a thorough, effective setup on your end. But I do hope this helps in any way.

Have you tried using Spotlight to ask it what its indexable contents is?

Could this have been done with Folder Actions and AppleScript?

I'm not in front of my Mac but you could you run `cat`on a Pages file?

Sadly not, a pages files is a sort of zip package

I am almost positive I tried that, and I want to say no.

The problem is that apparently the Pages file is just a hidden bundle. But unlike apps, Final Cut Pro, and other Mac bundles unless you go into Pages and change an advanced setting per file it doesn't have the "Show Package Contents" that the others do.

msephton's sibling comment notes that Pages files are a ZIP bundle. (I just tested this, and that's the case - actually they're not even compressed, just stored.)

Inside this zip file there's a number of things:

- three preview JPGs at varying sizes (roughly 50px, 250px, 1000px) - a Metadata folder with a couple of plists and a UUID file - an Index folder which contains a bunch of .iwa files which appear to be some Apple iWork suite specific thing. I'm not sure if there's a real file format there or if they all have a different format keyed on the file name. If you run `strings` on one of them you could plausibly recover document text.