Remove unused Finder tags

Solution 1:

To view all the available tags in Finder, follow these steps:

  1. Enable display of tags by going to Finder → Preferences → Sidebar → Tags → Recent Tags.

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  1. In the Finder menu, enable show Sidebar and Status Bar if they are hidden.

  2. Under Tags section in the Finder Sidebar, click on All Tags.... This will display a list of all the available tags (pre-created + custom) sorted alphabetically.

  3. Click to select a tag from the list. The count of files/folders associated with the tag is shown in the Status Bar.

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  1. To delete a tag, right click on it and select Delete Tag "Tag_Name"... from the context menu.


For more information on tags in Finder, refer to the Apple support document, macOS Sierra: Use tags to organize files.

Solution 2:

Using Terminal

Given to a shell, this returns the count of files tagged with the tag named Yellow:

mdfind -count 'kMDItemUserTags = Yellow'