MacOS and Smart Folders

Below are my notes from learning a bit about smart folders in MacOS.

Copied from a Notes entry:

8/3/2022 - Smart Folders

I want to better organize my photos and videos (that are stored in Photos and currently shared to iCloud).

I also wanted to try using Smart Folders.

I’ve also never backed up my photos, so I got the idea that I could save my photos as a backup, while also sorting them (Photos contains both videos and photos), and also removing duplicate photos.

• I copied all of the photos and videos to my Extreme Pro SSD
• I copied all the files to PNG format.
• Several of these files are actually videos (.mov), which I coped as well.
• I then created two smart folders
• A smart folder for images (PNG)
• A smart folder for movies (MOV)

One thing I had a problem with is determining how to get the smart folders to only search a certain drive.  By default, when created smart folders, the criteria is set to search the native SSD.  I couldn’t find a way to change this to search against the Extreme Pro.

I decided to cheat by assigning all the files on the Extreme Pro SSD the following tag:  Extreme Pro.  If they were photos, I added the “photos” tag and if they were movies, I added the “movie”, “quicktime”, and “video” tags. 

I noticed that there are many duplicates of photos (they’re appended with (1), (2)…).  I need to study up on how to use smart folders to eliminate the duplicates (if possible).

https://osxdaily.com/2020/09/17/how-find-duplicate-files-mac/ can help with this.

Once I get the duplicates removed, I’ll need to go through them and get rid of any needless photos/videos.  The plan is to archive them all, as well as not have them taking up iCloud space and hard drive space on both the Mini and MBA. 

I also couldn’t find a way to refine an existing smart folder’s name, so I created a new one and gave it the name I needed, then saved it.  I then had the problem of having the original smart folder and couldn’t find out how to delete it.  The following URL helped to delete that folder:  https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-an-Item-from-the-Finder-Sidebar-on-a-Mac.

8/4/2022 - Smart Folders 2

After watching a few videos on Youtube about how to create searches and saving the searches as smart folders, I did the following:

1. Opened new Finder window
2. Used Cmd+F (to find files)
3. Chose the following as “Search:” - Extreme Pro
4. Searched for File extension =  PNG
5. Saved as “Photos - Extreme Pro”
6. The above resulted in saving the search as a smart folder.