Advanced search using tags (à la Finder)

[marcher]

Can Alfred do advanced searches using tags as Finder can? 

[giovanni]

you can either use the native function from Alfred (see screenshot below, in File Search), or use this workflow from @deanishe to open a Finder window.

[marcher]

Hey,@giovanni. Thanks for the reply. I wonder, does Alfred's native search capability support Boolean conditions? For example, I would like to find all files with Tag1 but exclude the ones that also have Tag2.

 

The workflow you suggested is interesting, but I would like to integrate Alfred's search beyond the scope of Finder, which seems to only search for folders and files. I have glimpsed that this is possible with Alfred. Ideally, I would like to be able to search for a tag and find all items with that tag, whether those items are files on my HD, bookmarks on raindrop.io, notes on Obsidian, and annotations on hypothes.is. Does that sound possible?

Edited February 28, 2022 by marcher

[giovanni]

one could parse the user's input to generate variables and use them in a File Filter (as in the screenshot below where var1 would be an 'included' tag and var2 an 'excluded' one). This would only be feasible with a finite number of tags though (I think). Would that work? Or an alternative is to build an mdfind command based on the user's input. 

 

As for the other items, as long as they are files and indexed/findable by spotlight, they should be returned as well. 

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by giovanni

[deanishe]

15 hours ago, marcher said:

Does that sound possible?

 

It's possible, but a lot of hard work. Alfred only knows how to search for files (and contacts). Anything else you would have to implement in a workflow, or write some software to create proxy files for all your applications' bookmarks, notes etc.

[giovanni]

@marcher how is this? 

 

I wanted to suggest tag autocompletion, but it looks like the solution described here to fetch all tags does not work in Monterey?

Does anybody know how to retrieve all user-generated tags in Monterey? 

 

Also, after adding a filename search this can be used to shorten the file names or present other information as discussed previously with @Matman67