How to select the most appropriate way of storing metadata, limitations of Finder Comments and Tags, which extended attributes are best, and which utilities to edit and manage them.
Finder
A simple and accessible way of categorising folders, they’re stored as extended attributes, and robust. They work best with up to 7 categories, but can confuse with many different text labels.
Although easy to add to documents, Finder comments work strangely, and can prove fragile. They can also be used to conceal malicious code by steganography, but there are better options.
If you’ve installed the new Creator Studio versions of Keynote, Numbers and Pages you’ll have noticed those apps have the same name as the iWork ones, and can sit side-by-side with them. What trickery was used to do this?
Drag content from an app onto the Desktop or a location in a Finder window to create a clipping file. Although they date back to the early 1990s, they’re still well supported in Tahoe.
Instead of logging out and back in, it’s possible to relaunch Spotlight from the Finder, as demonstrated here with the aid of the log. And it might be useful too.
The Preview pane in Finder windows can show a comprehensive list of metadata, or a shortened list you can customise in Preview Options. Here’s how to use it and how it can provide further information.
Normally, the x.1 update fixes many of the bugs from the first release. But in Tahoe, a crop of fresh bugs have been included. Here are some of them, and how they have arisen.
They’re invisible in the Finder, even when it’s showing hidden files. They’re present in many of the folders in your Home folder. And they can do bad things like break your backups.
VMs running 26.1 can’t access iCloud and related services, with no workaround. Finder Services below an item’s thumbnail don’t work.
The Eclectic Light Company 