Working with Labels

Labels enable you to color code and text code files and folders as a means of identifying and organizing them. For example, you can assign all the folders for a specific project using the same label. In addition to making the relationship between these folders clearer, you can choose to group items within a window by label, which keeps them near one another as well. You can also use Smart Folders to automatically gather files and folders that have the same label.

Setting Up Labels

You can assign text to the color labels by following these steps:

1.	Open the Finder Preferences window.
2.	Click the Labels button to open the Labels pane, which contains the seven label colors. Next to each color is its text label, which by default is the name of the color.
3.	Edit the text labels for each color to match your label needs. For example, you can replace the color with the name of a project.

Applying Labels

You can apply labels to a folder or file by following these steps:

1.	Select the items to which you want to apply a label.
2.	Open the Action pop-up menu or the contextual menu.
3.	Select the label you want to apply to the selected labels.

When an item has a label applied to it and you view the enclosing folder in Icon view, its name is highlighted in the label's color. When you view a window in the Columns or List view, a large dot filled with the label color appears next to the item you have labeled. If you view a window in the List view and select to show the Label column, the label text appears in the Label column for the item.

TIP

If you view a window in Icon view, you can choose to keep items grouped by label. This keeps all the files with which you have associated a specific location together in the window.