When I first started with devonthink I did not look at the preferences closely enough when I started importing the files and as result ended up with thousands and thousands of tags that despite getting rid of the databases continue to show up in spotlight.
Any suggestions on how to remove them either from with devonthink or on the mac.
When I’m in Finder and I go onto tags and select a bunch of them to delete it looks like it’s working but then they’re still there after it completes
It sounds like you weren’t using these tags yourself on these files. What’s tagging items in your database? Do you maybe have a busy RSS feed set up?
There’s an unused tags default smart group that’s useful for cleaning once you’ve identified the source.
If folks here can’t help, it’s probably best to check in at the official DEVONthink forum:
It’s not really a DT problem though, it’s a macOS problem if I understand it right. How do you delete a tag from all files in macOS?
If you do a Google search, there are ways involving the terminal.
Thanks for the links.
I have deleted the tags in DevonThink and deleted the databases. I am getting ready to delete DevonThink.
When I go into finder and try and delete the tags it looks like it is working but they are still there after it seems to have finished.
I have reindexed spotlight w Clean my Mac and that did not fix the problem.
Going to try and reindexed spotlight the n safe mode by making the drive private and then adding it in again.
Not sure what else to try get the tags out of Spotlight.
Try a finder search like:
Tags have always been a little unstable, in my opinion — especially when trying to delete them. I’ve been using them for a long time to do some automatic processing with Hazel. I’ve never had a problem with a tag going away, but I have had “zombie” tags that seem to stay around or reappear even after I deleted them.
And of course, now with iCloud Drive, I suspect it’s even more challenging to delete a tag because it needs to be removed everywhere before a sync can bring it back!
I’d use Tags for a lot more if there was a reliable interface for handling them.
So for example, if you have the “Convert hashtags to tags option” turned on, DT will generate tags for everything it OCRs. If you import, say, receipts with receipt numbers, you’ll get a bunch of unique tags like “1044828678” and “002847” and “32.”
