Sidebar tags no longer showing tagged files

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Level 1

12 points

Sidebar tags no longer showing tagged files

This issue started after I turned my MacBook on this morning. I have no idea what caused this. I have years' worth of files tagged wth 30+ tags. Every tag is accessible via my Finder sidebar.

When viewing a folder with tagged files, the tags show on the files as normal. But, when clicking on that tag in my Finder sidebar, the tag folder shows 0 items. This has affected every single tag I have.

I discovered that files re-appear in the sidebar tag if I copy-and-paste the original files, but this is not a real solution, given the number of files that have been affected. Copy-and-pasting whole folders does not fix the files within them. This has impacted files saved locally, and files saved to my iCloud Drive.

This is seriously impacting my work. Please help me figure out how to fix this. I tried restarting and force shutting down my Mac. I tried quitting and relaunching Finder. I checked that everything is ticked in Spotlight search settings (since that was suggested as a solution in a Reddit post about this issue). How do I fix this?

Details: MacBook Pro, Sequoia 15.2, 1.7TB available space.

I haven't updated to Sequoia 15.3 yet, because I prefer to know what bugs an update has before jumping in (due to past bad experiences). Would updating fix this issue, or would it change nothing?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.2

Posted on Feb 9, 2025 2:55 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 9, 2025 3:05 PM in response to corefunction

corefunction wrote:

This issue started after I turned my MacBook on this morning. I have no idea what caused this. I have years' worth of files tagged wth 30+ tags. Every tag is accessible via my Finder sidebar.

When viewing a folder with tagged files, the tags show on the files as normal. But, when clicking on that tag in my Finder sidebar, the tag folder shows 0 items. This has affected every single tag I have.

I discovered that files re-appear in the sidebar tag if I copy-and-paste the original files, but this is not a real solution, given the number of files that have been affected. Copy-and-pasting whole folders does not fix the files within them. This has impacted files saved locally, and files saved to my iCloud Drive.

This is seriously impacting my work. Please help me figure out how to fix this. I tried restarting and force shutting down my Mac. I tried quitting and relaunching Finder. I checked that everything is ticked in Spotlight search settings (since that was suggested as a solution in a Reddit post about this issue). How do I fix this?

Details: MacBook Pro, Sequoia 15.2, 1.7TB available space.

I haven't updated to Sequoia 15.3 yet, because I prefer to know what bugs an update has before jumping in (due to past bad experiences). Would updating fix this issue, or would it change nothing?

You can wait then

no one is going to want to trouble shoot an old macOS 15.2 until you apply the current 15.3

for bug fixes.

report back if no resolve.

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Answer 2

corefunction Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 10, 2025 3:06 AM in response to corefunction

Update: After restarting and force shutting down again, I have found a solution. If a folder contains files that you want re-added to sidebar tag groups, delete that folder, then use command+z to bring it back. For some reason, this forces Finder to recognise the contained files as being tagged. (On Reddit, the recommended solution was to copy-and-paste folders and delete the originals, but that didn't work for me.) You need to do this to all affected folders which, for me, was all of them... because this issue affected everything.

This is still an imperfect solution because, with years' worth of tagged files, it's impossible to check whether all files have been re-added. I still don't know what caused this issue, or whether Finder is now handling tags normally.

If anyone has any actually helpful advice about preventing this issue, or knows why this might suddenly happen, please leave a comment with info relevant to this specific bug. But I have solved my issue in the meantime.

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Answer 3

corefunction Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 25, 2025 8:40 PM in response to corefunction

Update: This issue is still occurring, and I don't know why. At least once every week, I need to delete and then command+z all folders which contain tagged files that I need to be accessible via the tags on the sidebar. This will work for an amount of time, then suddenly the problem will freshly occur again. My Mac is fully updated.

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Answer 4

corefunction Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 9, 2025 4:26 PM in response to leroydouglas

Hello Leroy Douglas, thank you for the guidance. I have updated to 15.3, and the issue persists. What do you suggest next? Thank you for the help.

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