How to find apps using metadata

If you can’t use Application Categories in Finder Item Groups to locate your apps easily, is there an alternative you can use? This article suggests some solutions.

The snags with Application Categories are that they’re baked into apps and can’t be added or changed by the user, and the list of categories is fixed and inappropriate for many Mac users. Show apps by Application Categories, and many are just dumped in Other, or into large and vague categories such as Utilities. To improve on this, we must turn to metadata.

macOS provides two specific types of metadata suitable for use to categorise apps: keywords and application categories (yes, confusingly with the same name as those you can’t use in the Info.plist file). These are stored in extended attributes (xattrs) named com.apple.metadata:kMDItemKeywords and com.apple.metadata:kMDItemApplicationCategories respectively. Apps consist of a top-level folder which is an executable bundle containing the signed executable code and other contents. By attaching the appropriate xattr containing keywords or app categories to the app’s top-level folder, with the extension .app, we can use the information there to locate and identify that app in the Finder.

Currently, it’s easier to use keywords, but you’ll discover that they’re also used by other files too. If you want to use metadata which will only be accessed for apps, use application categories if you can.

If you’ve opted to use keywords, you can tag your apps using my free utility SearchKey (not SearchKeyLite, in this case). Open a new window if necessary, click on its Open button to select an app to tag and ensure that you open the .app folder at the top level of the app. Type in the keywords you wish to attach to that app, separating them with commas, and click the Save button.

You can also attach keywords and application categories using my xattr editor xattred. Click on its Open button and select an app to tag, again ensuring that you’re working with the top-level .app folder. To add a new xattr, click on the New button. Paste in either
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemKeywords
or
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemApplicationCategories
as appropriate as the name of the xattr you want to add, then switch the popup menu to Property list, and paste in a plist containing your categories or keywords, such as
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <string>Corruption, Integrity</string> </plist>
where your text is given as the string value. Click on the Save button, and that new xattr should be written to that .app folder.

Once you’ve tagged your first app, test the system out by looking for it. Open a new Finder window and select the Find command in the File menu to prepare it for searching. The two search criteria which you need to bring into its popup menu, currently showing Kind, are Keywords and Application Categories (not Category, which confusingly refers to the Application Category baked into the app itself). You’ll probably need to add either or both of those to the popup menu through the Other… item at the end. Locate and tick the search criteria from that list.

Set the criterion then to read, for example, Application Categories contains integrity to find all items with “integrity” in the string of the com.apple.metadata:kMDItemApplicationCategories xattr. If you’re using keywords and want to exclude any from documents and other files, add another search criterion to limit results to Kind is Application.

You can now park this search window to one side, ready to type in some characters from the keywords or categories to find all apps which contain those.

There are some limitations to this scheme. You can’t of course tag any of the apps bundled as part of macOS, nor Safari, which are each protected by SIP. You should, though, be able to tag amost any other app, which needn’t even be in an Applications folder. However, when you update or replace an app, that is likely to wipe your xattrs, so be prepared.

If there’s sufficient interest, I could modify SearchKey so that it included Application Categories too, or even build a dedicated app for this purpose.

5Comments

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1

EcleX on May 1, 2020 at 7:27 am

Thanks. Yes, please. The possibility to add Application Categories using SearchKey or through a dedicated application would be quite useful.

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2

John Gilbert on May 3, 2020 at 7:38 am

To be worthwhile pursuing application categories, I suggest that there needs to be a way of preserving categories through app updates. At a minimum, a script to save all category/app combinations in use and a second script to restore them. At best an option in a dedicated application. And even better if the ‘saved’ categories can be synced via iCloud/Dropbox to multiple Macs.

Whilst I understand your preference for using xattrs, I would use Finder tags which are easily accessible in many places (Spotlight, Finder, Alfred, Leap, etc.) and which are can be manipulated with existing tools. Of course, Finder tags, just like xattrs, are lost when an app is updated.

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- 3
  
  hoakley on May 3, 2020 at 8:17 am
  
  Thank you.
  Yes, that’s why Appui needs a database of apps which have been categorised, so that it can automatically restore them in the event that an app is replaced. One advantage of tagging the .app folder itself is that most updates in place, such as Sparkle updates, don’t replace that folder, just some of its contents.
  Finder tags are actually just xattrs. What’s more, they have limited number of colours, and are widely used for all sorts of other purposes. The whole point here is to use something which is specific, not generic, or it just gets confused with everything else. I have tried using Finder tags in the past, and they’re of no use in this role, I’m afraid.
  Howard.
  
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4

John Hay on May 7, 2020 at 6:49 pm

Indeed, an interesting and illuminating topic to be sure. I guess I’m lazy. When I set up a new macOS machine I never use MA (Migration Assistant) because it will carry over any imperfections from the source to the target. Instead I always do a totally “clean install” even though it’s very time consuming. In the process I can do some general housekeeping such as not carrying over old, unused apps, etc. Inevitably however I then find myself purchasing new unneeded replacement software, some of which I already had in one form or another on the old machine, LOL.

This got me thinking of the value of the topic at hand. Although I have nowhere near the 400 or so apps sited, I still find myself forgetting what I “used to have” on some of my older machines that might work, get lazy, and end up downloading something new from the Apple Store.

Then I realized that it was not only the apps running on my internal storage, but that I also use more and more cloud based apps. To some degree my password manager (1PW) keeps track of these, and using tags in 1PW I can normally find whatever I forget.

I’m glad that this topic has surfaced as it’s rightly of value to somehow “catalog” one’s existing resources. The only thing I’m adding into the mix I suppose is the additional load of one’s “cloud based” apps.

Thank you all for your incredible insights, suggestions, and discussion of this topic. Perhaps this will inspire me to finally act.

All the best,
John
Ocean City, NJ

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- 5
  
  hoakley on May 7, 2020 at 10:01 pm
  
  Thank you.
  Howard.
  
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