Things
Tags
A tag is a #hashtag that groups things across every list and day at once.
Tags are part of NewTwos Plus. Plus
Why you'd care
Lists are places. A thing lives in exactly one. Tags are the other axis: a way to pull together everything about a topic no matter which day or list it landed on.
That matters because capture is deliberately careless. You write onto Today without deciding, and a tag is how you retroactively make a topic out of a hundred scattered lines.
The 60-second version
Type # followed by a word inside a thing, or press ⌘⇧T to pick from your existing tags.
Step by step
Finding tagged things
Searching #tag returns the lists the tag appears in rather than a flat pile of things. That is deliberate: a tag is usually a topic, and topics are more useful grouped. See search.
The Tags view shows every tag you use, with counts.
Tags are case-insensitive
#Work and #work are the same tag, so you cannot accidentally split a topic in two by capitalising differently.
Going further
Do not tag everything. Search already finds things by their words. A tag earns its place when the words vary but the topic does not, like #recipe across lines that never say "recipe".
Tags can become lists. A dynamic list is defined by a tag filter rather than by contents, so it stays current without you moving anything. See dynamic lists.
Match all or any. A filter on several tags can require all of them or any of them, which is the difference between narrowing and widening.
Settings that change this
- Settings Lists & <i>Things</i> Tag order orders your tag list by use, count or alphabetically.
- Settings Lists & <i>Things</i> Tag filter match sets whether new filters match all tags or any.
- Settings Lists & <i>Things</i> Make lists for tags generates a list per tag automatically.
- Settings Lists & <i>Things</i> Show tags in side menu puts your tags in the side menu.
- Settings Lists & <i>Things</i> Reset tag counts clears usage counts.
Tips
- Fewer than ten tags is a system. Fifty tags is a second filing problem.
- Tag the exception, not the rule. If nearly everything gets
#work, the tag tells you nothing.