While you can easily use Spotlight to find that missing file, it's nice to be able to open up Documents and have all your folder nicely organized. With Labels, you can add a bit more of an organizational element to your folders to easily flag down project files or identify the folder with all of your secret, personal stuff. Read on to find out how to get things in order in with Labels.
The first step to using labels is something that a lot of people typically miss, and that’s setting the label names in Finder Preferences. Navigate to Finder > Preferences > Labels.
Here you can specify names for specific label colors. By default, they're labeled as colors. You can change them to whatever criteria you need, like school work, work projects, or photos.
After you’ve finished specifying label names, your names will be automatically saved.
To label a file or folder in the Finder, simply right-click on the item and select a Label. If you want to remove it, simply click the white box with the “x” in the Label section of the right-click menu.
Keep in mind that applying a label to a file or folder will change its name to the color of the label.
If you want to have one-click access to your files, you can do so with Labels by creating a Finder Smart Folder. Smart folders are ways to have your Mac automatically add files to a folder based on certain criteria, which is the label in this case.
To begin, open a new Finder window and select File > New Smart Folder. In the resulting window, click the "+" dial to add a new criteria. Select “File Label” from the drop-down menu, then click the folder color you want this smart folder to automatically find.
To save this smart folder, click the save button, then specify a name. Go with the default settings in the Save panel to have your saved smart folder automatically added to the Search For section of the Finder.
As soon as you label an item in the Finder, it will be automatically shown in this smart folder, ready to do your bidding. No more searching around for that group of files you thought you misplaced!
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