question: are Mac OS x tags portable?
fschwiet opened this issue · 1 comments
I have some questions about how tags work in Mac OSx Finder. Are tags written to the file somehow, or is it stored somewhere else in the system? Can I see/edit the tags from other operating systems? My concern is if the tags will stick and be available in other environments.
Forgive me for asking through a github issue. I have not been able to find the answer for myself. I was looking to use a command line application like this to organize some media, but first I wanted to check the limitations of the work.
tag writes to the extended attributes present in the HFS and APFS file systems, and possibly other file systems hosted on MacOS that also support extended attributes in some way. As such, it's possible that such a file system, hosted on another OS, such as Linux or Windows, might be able to read and interpret the xattrs, if they support reading and writing this metadata.
Note, however, that neither HFS tags, nor the tag tool, are designed to be a portable solution: they are intended only for use on Mac OS systems.