Tags, ratings and comments
Give any file tags, a rating and a comment. Skwir keeps them on the files, where your other applications read them too.
Add them
- Tags: select files and press CtrlShiftG (or right-click › Tags…). Click a tag to put it on every selected file, again to take it off; type a new one and press Enter. CtrlEnter applies.
- Rating and comment: open Details (CtrlI) and use Add… or Edit…, or click a star. Click the stars a file has to take the rating away.
Tags show beside names in the list, as dots on thumbnails in the grid, and in Details. Sort by Rating from the View menu; search with tag:holiday or rating>=4. A change of notes is undone with CtrlZ, like any other.
Where they are kept
Notes are kept on the files, where other applications keep them:
- the file’s extended attributes, as Dolphin and KDE do;
- XMP sidecars (
photo.jpg.xmp), as darktable and Lightroom do; - a Mac’s tags, and its
._files on drives without attributes; - TagSpaces’ sidecars and tags in names (
name[a b].ext), and filetags’ names (name -- a b.ext) once turned on.
Settings › Notes chooses which to read and which to write. When two disagree, the latest change wins and Details says so; its Kept in line says where a file’s notes are. A sidecar goes wherever its file goes.
Categories
A tag can sit inside another: Places/France/Paris is within Places/France, within Places. A search for tag:Places finds all three. A category can hold one tag at a time: giving a file Status/Done then takes Status/Draft off it.
Tags are places
Every tag opens like a folder, listing its files from everywhere, with a Folder column and a bar to narrow them by their other tags and kinds.
- All Tags, in the sidebar, lists the tags of your home folder. The Tags button at the end of the address (AltG) shows the tags of the folder you are in, and takes you back.
- Drop files on a tag to tag them. Delete in a tag takes the tag off the selected files; nothing goes to the Trash.
- CtrlShiftN makes a tag inside the one shown; F2 on a tag renames it everywhere, as a plan to review.
- Pin the tags you use to the sidebar. Shift+click a pinned tag to keep only what has it too; Alt+click to look for it in the folder shown.
Copies keep them
A move always keeps a file’s notes. A copy keeps its tags, rating, comment and where a download came from, onto a drive without attributes too: Skwir writes them where that drive can hold them (Settings › General).