hoakley June 2, 2023 Macs, Technology

Customising metadata display in the Finder

Although the Finder is the most obvious place to look for metadata associated with files, it’s not always obvious where to look, and when you do you might conclude that little is exposed there. This article explains what’s displayed where, and how to customise it.

There are three places in the Finder where it displays metadata, including some extended attributes:

in the Get Info dialog, or better in its Inspector variant;
in columns in List View;
in QuickLook previews, best seen in Column View.

Get Info

Select an item in the Finder and press Command-I for the Get Info dialog. There’s also a less used Inspector variant, opened using Command-Opt-I. If you want to keep the dialog open on the same file, use the standard Get Info; it you want its contents to change according to which file is selected, then opt for the Inspector instead.

findermeta1

Metadata shown in the dialog appear in the More Info and Comments sections, and vary according to the file type: here a text file reveals the contents of two extended attributes, giving Title and Comment. The latter isn’t the Finder/Spotlight comment, which is both displayed and edited in the Comments section. Apart from the latter, those wouldn’t be shown for images, movies, or audio files, though, which have their own fields specific to their content.

Choice of metadata to be displayed here isn’t customisable, though, and is set by the Finder.

List View

By default, List Views in the Finder don’t show any metadata, but can be customised to display Finder/Spotlight comments. Control-click (or two-finger tap) in one of the column headers and select the fields you want displayed from the popup menu.

findermeta2

In addition to these common fields, available in all List Views, the three dedicated media folders in the Home folder, Movies, Music and Pictures, have additional fields available, appropriate to their content. But those can’t apparently be accessed in other folders when in List (or any other) View.

QuickLook Preview

To see the metadata in a QuickLook Preview, select the file in Column View, and they’re listed in Information beneath its thumbnail. These are the most customisable: to see the list of fields available, use the View / Show Preview Options menu command, or the same command in the contextual menu.

findermeta3

Common to all file types are the Tags and Dates sections, and a More section is also usually available. Beyond those, metadata available varies greatly according to the type of file, and includes those metadata embedded in the file data as well as those saved in extended attributes. For still images and movies, the lists are long, and include a selection of standard fields taken from Exif and others.

Currently, in Ventura 13.4, Preview Options doesn’t always work quite right, and adds to the confusion.

findermeta4

In this case, although Subject is clearly unticked in Preview Options at the left, the Preview shown includes the Subject regardless.

Text files

Perhaps the easiest way to visualise what can be shown by way of metadata is to list the scope available for each of the three Finder interfaces for text files:

Get Info: Title, Subject, Authors, Comment, Finder/Spotlight Comments;
List View: Finder/Spotlight Comments only;
QuickLook Preview: Keywords, Title, Subject, Organisations, Authors, Editors, Comment, but not Finder/Spotlight Comments.

Storage

The Finder might seem to treat this metadata as a second-class citizen, but it’s certainly not as far as safe-keeping is concerned. Unlike file data, which doesn’t have the protection of checksums for integrity, extended attributes are stored in HFS+ and APFS file system objects, and are verified by Fletcher 64 checksums in APFS.

fileobjects

Although APFS doesn’t separate file system data from the extents used to store file data, HFS+ normally keeps extended attributes in its Attributes file.

This contrasts with Finder/Spotlight Comments, stored in .DS_Store files, and metadata that are stored within file data itself, such as Exif.

Conclusions

Extensive metadata is shown in the Finder, although the user is given only limited control over what is displayed where.
There are many anomalies in the metadata that become apparent. For example, much of the Exif data is accessible for images, but none of the more popular extended attributes, such as Copyright.
Better design could give the user greater flexibility, and enable better use of metadata.
Preview Options is currently buggy.

15Comments

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1

Tristan Hübsch on June 2, 2023 at 1:05 pm

Why do these articles feel like the “Missing Manual (with Annotations)”?
(rhetorical question; no need to answer)

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2

John Gilbert on June 3, 2023 at 11:51 pm

Another way of looking at metadata. I make a lot of use of a simple Automator Quick Action to display metadata as indexed for Spotlight. The Quick Action contains a one line script: mdls “$1” | open -f

Whilst this Quick Action is using a different source of metadata it is arguably the more useful as it shows all the metadata which could be used in a search. I don’t need to worry about where the metadata is sourced (xattr, .DS_Store, exif, etc.).

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- 3
  
  hoakley on June 4, 2023 at 6:07 am
  
  Thank you. That works fine, of course, for search. However, should you want to edit the metadata you then need to know how to do that.
  Howard.
  
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  - 4
    
    John Gilbert on June 4, 2023 at 10:07 am
    
    In macOS, I see the Spotlight index as the nexus between disparate sources of metadata and being able to make of use of the metadata in a coherent way. And, yes, we need to know how to create and modify that metadata – some of that is in tools (like yours) addressing xattr as source of file system metadata, but also in photo and document processing apps which create metadata within their own file formats. There can be no single source of metadata, but I wish for a single repository for using that metadata.
    
    The sad thing is that Apple has chosen to keep both metadata and content from its own apps (particularly Notes, Mail and Photos) walled off from a central repository like the main Spotlight index. This is part of the tension between application and document centric paradigms which is a major way that “iOSification” is detroying much of what is/was valuable in OS X. (rant)
    
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    - 5
      
      hoakley on June 4, 2023 at 11:13 am
      
      Thank you.
      The problem with that second category is that there are two distinct issues: some apps like Notes use databases rather than documents, for which their metadata is necessarily internal. You can work around that by using a different app, of course.
      Then there are apps like Mail that do use Spotlight, but in app-specific form, so that their metadata is only accessible within that app. Apple does that largely for privacy reasons, and in the case of Mail it can be worked around using HoudahSpot, for instance.
      So the first sub-category doesn’t have any metadata indexed in Spotlight’s indexes; the second does, but it’s partitioned off to prevent access outside the app.
      Howard.
      
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6

jimthing on June 4, 2023 at 7:46 am

Are there any apps that can show full/better metadata, and even edit it?
I’ve always thought the macOS options as extremely lacking.

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- 7
  
  hoakley on June 4, 2023 at 11:05 am
  
  The problem here is that metadata have several sources.
  Much is embedded in the file data itself – that’s true for images, video, audio, PDFs, MS Office documents, and many more. In general that’s not good, as it requires a specialist editor capable working with that file format.
  Macs, but few other systems, also use extended attributes attached to the file, for which xattred is the most complete viewer/editor I know.
  Then there are some oddities like Finder Comments stored in files like .DS_Store, that can only be viewed and editing in the Finder.
  As John has pointed out, Spotlight is a focal point for viewing much of this metadata, but even that can’t openly access some in-app metadata, such as that in Apple’s Mail app, or in apps that aren’t document-based like Notes.
  Howard.
  
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8

Michele on August 18, 2023 at 9:41 pm

How does one edit metadata? Beyond Finder > Get info > comments, what is there native to macOS? What other third party? Thanks!

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- 9
  
  hoakley on August 18, 2023 at 9:53 pm
  
  Metadata are stored in two different places: much is stored in the document data, such as EXIF for images. You can edit those using better image editors, etc. The other main location is in extended attributes, although few tools provide easy access to the most suitable xattrs forTitle, Authors, copyright, etc.
  Howard.
  
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  - 10
    
    Michele on August 19, 2023 at 5:12 am
    
    Ah, yes, for pictures I use Adobe bridge. Possibly your xattred can do something about them, I recall?
    
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    - 11
      
      hoakley on August 19, 2023 at 6:16 am
      
      No. EXIF and a lot of other metadata are actually written and stored in the main data of files. Many formats do that: PDFs, MS Office documents, and so on. While there are some apps that specialise in editing those metadata, in general it’s better to use the document editor to do so.
      You can always attach xattrs to files, and they can contain additional metadata accessible in Spotlight search, for example. While you can edit those using xattred, that’s a general purpose xattr editor. For working with only xattr metadata, you should find Metamer, SearchKey and SearchKeyLite better.
      Howard.
      
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- 12
  
  John Gilbert on August 20, 2023 at 12:15 am
  
  Howard has already dealt with metadata stored inside a document/photo – use the tools which create or modify the document/photo. For example, MS Word, PDF creation apps, photo editors, or specialised exif editors.
  
  For file system metadata, ask why you need it. I suggest the reasons are just for more advanced searching. In practice, Finder Comments and Tags are about it. Both can be added and changed using Finder’s Get Info. This is probably sufficient for single files.
  
  When I need to deal with many files I automate this. Two ways I use:
  1) Applescript can manipulate comments and so can be used by itself or embedded in other automation tools (Automator or third party like Keyboard Maestro).
  2) Tag which is a command line app (https://github.com/jdberry/tag/ or installed via homebrew). I use that within with shell scripts or any of the many automation tools which can use shell scripts.
  
  There is also Leap https://ironicsoftware.com/leap/ which predates Apple adding tags to macOS. It is not free, but is a great tool for those that make extensive use of file tags for file management.
  
  In my experience you don’t need a general purpose xattr editor for file system metadata unless you want to add your own metadata. But that moves you outside the scope of using metadata with Finder.
  
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  - 13
    
    hoakley on August 20, 2023 at 1:13 pm
    
    Finder Comments are, as I have shown on several occasions, highly unreliable because they’re not actually stored in the file at all, but in the hidden .DS_Store file in the folder. I strongly discourage users from wasting their time putting anything in the Finder Comments, as sooner or later it will be lost. xattrs are actually considerably more sticky and robust now, and with careful choice survive iCloud Drive as well as copying between volumes.
    Tags are of extremely limited use, as in practice they can only assign an item to one of a small number of categories.
    Howard.
    
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    - 14
      
      John Gilbert on August 20, 2023 at 11:57 pm
      
      I think you have missed the value and flexibility of tags. There is no limit to the range of tags and their use in Finder/Spotlight/HS searches. I have learnt that it is important to keep to a dictionary and structure – mentally even if not documented. Tags are robust (stored as xattrs), but are easily set/changed in Finder or the command line without the need for general purpose xattr tools.
      
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    - 15
      
      hoakley on August 21, 2023 at 10:52 am
      
      Maybe.
      My free app gives you easy GUI access to no less than 16 different xattrs that are far more flexible, survive iCloud Drive and transfer to other volumes and Macs, and have their own Spotlight search categories. Some are also shown in Finder’s Get Info dialog. Why bother contriving a system build around tags?
      Howard.
      
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