Write Tags to file so that they also can be used on macOS system level

augustaugust

Brand new user so bear with me. There is a tab to add "Tags" to a document. My question is: are those tags written to the file so that the tags would sync back to macOS system level? Zotero does not seem to do this automatically and I was unable to find any option to write tags to the file manually.

I think this would be a useful feature. In case it does not yet exist, please consider this a feature request.

bwiernik

This is not currently possible.

augustaugust

Is there a place to file this feature request? I would really love to see this functionality.

bwiernik

You can consider posting here a feature request. I would generally not be optimistic about this particular feature, as file tags are a Mac-specific feature without an analogue on other systems.

Generally, my recommendation is to switch to using Zotero’s organization features (collections, tags) and search functions to interact with files stored in Zotero, rather than continuing to try to access them directly through Finder. There is also an Alfred workflow to integrate with Zotero if you want to be able to search, for example, using something like Spotlight.

augustaugust

Yeah, I understand this feature would be macOS specific and Zotero is cross-platform.

Using Launchbar (instead of Alfred) but I think there's no specific Zotero support in Launchbar.

ptujec

I have two LaunchBar actions to work with Zotero attachments.
https://github.com/Ptujec/LaunchBar/tree/master/Zotero-Actions#launchbar-actions-for-zotero

I also tried my hand at writing one to show items by tags. But using the web API is not ideal. It is either slow or out of sync. Alfred is using local data, but I know to little about Python to be able to port it. :(

ptujec

@augustaugust
Hi! Are you still using LaunchBar? I am working on a new action. If you are interested, the link above should still work.

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@ptujec I'm an Alfred user, not a LaunchBar user, but the scripts you've posted are making me consider switching. Do you know of an existing way (using Alfred/LaunchBar/AppleScript/debug-bridge/etc.) of batch-adding macOS tags to a bunch of attachments at once, ie. tagging every PDF attachment in a Zotero collection with the Red tag (or a custom tag that macOS can interact with)?

My end goal is to use more complex/faster search tools (like HoudahSpot and DEVONthink) that are macOS native apps, but to limit my searches to only run on the contents of specific groups of files that I manage in Zotero. I figure that if it were possible to add macOS-level tags to items through Zotero, then I can start getting these different apps to talk to each other.

Alternatively, it would be great if the Zotero devs added RegEx search support, but that's a pretty niche feature and understandably may not be their top priority.

ptujec

@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I am not sure if I can help you with this one. Other than some custom searches using mdfind I have not done much tag scripting. But maybe you don't even need a script for that. You can tag a bunch of files right in the Finder. Just select the files and press option + cmd + i.

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@ptujec

You can tag a bunch of files right in the Finder. Just select the files and press option + cmd + i.

You're right about that. The trouble is selecting the files in Finder in the first place. If I've got a Zotero collection containing dozens of items, each with one or more PDF attachments, and I want to select them all in Finder, there's no easy way to do that. Right-clicking the items in Zotero and choosing Show File will open a hundred different Finder windows, because Zotero's data directory structure puts each PDF attachment inside it's own folder. So AFAIK, I'd be stuck manually tagging each PDF in Finder one by one. It's a tedious process that I'd like to automate.