It’s common that when you’ve been using a personal productivity app for a long time that allows you to use tags to provide context to your tasks and classify all kinds of content, there comes a time when the number of tags you’ve generated becomes quite large.
In the twelve years I’ve been using FacileThings, I’ve created and deleted many tags, and yet I still have a list of 174 tags in my system right now. To give you an idea, users who have been using the app for more than two years have an average of 120 tags.
Some of these tags may have lost their meaning over time, and some may have been created incorrectly (a plural tag when a singular tag already exists, different tags with the same meaning, etc.).
For these reasons, and because sometimes using a tag is more than enough to keep track of certain tasks (it’s not always necessary to create a project), we’ve released a new feature to help you manage your tags and their associated actions.
The Tags option is located in the Organize menu and allows you to view your list of tags, sorted alphabetically, and view and edit all the items associated with each tag in each of the lists:
The “edit” option (1) allows you to access the tag editor where you can rename the tag you are editing (1) or delete it (2):
If you rename a tag with the name of another tag that already exists, both tags will be merged into one.
Deleting a tag does not remove the entire word from the items that contain it, but only the # symbol. This is done to preserve the meaning of texts where the tag is part of the phrase (such as “#call Mike”).
NOTE: The options to rename and delete tags were previously located in the Account option, Utilities section. They have been removed from there.
14 comments
This is a nice improvement, but when you talked about a new feature regarding the tags I hoped it was nested tags.
I organize them by category:
#location/home
#location/office
#device/phone
#device/mac
#device/work_laptop
#communication/email
#communication/call
...and so on.
I would had like a tree view of nested tags better, but the alphabetical grouping is also useful!
It's always nice to see you constantly improving FT.
This feature'll be added to the mobile app too?!
BTW, I've just renewed my subscription for the next year. There are several subscription choices, why not add 2 years and 5 years subscription options?
This is a nice improvement, but when you talked about a new feature regarding the tags I hoped it was nested tags.
I organize them by category:
#location/home
#location/office
#device/phone
#device/mac
#device/work_laptop
#communication/email
#communication/call
...and so on.
I would had like a tree view of nested tags better, but the alphabetical grouping is also useful!
It's always nice to see you constantly improving FT.
This feature'll be added to the mobile app too?!
BTW, I've just renewed my subscription for the next year. There are several subscription choices, why not add 2 years and 5 years subscription options?
When you rename your tag to another tag that already exists, does it have a prompt asking you if you want to merge them? I think it's important for it to have a prompt just in case people have a lot of tags and forget if one already exists. Once the tags are merged I imagine there's no way to undo that, so the system needs to be very careful to ensure that's the user's intention before merging.
When you rename your tag to another tag that already exists, does it have a prompt asking you if you want to merge them? I think it's important for it to have a prompt just in case people have a lot of tags and forget if one already exists. Once the tags are merged I imagine there's no way to undo that, so the system needs to be very careful to ensure that's the user's intention before merging.
Nick - I just checked, there's an alert that tells you the merge is happening, but no last-chance prompt to save you if you've done it by mistake. I agree with you that this presents the possibility for danger.
Nick - I just checked, there's an alert that tells you the merge is happening, but no last-chance prompt to save you if you've done it by mistake. I agree with you that this presents the possibility for danger.
Thanks for checking on that Slick! That's good to know how it currently works.
Thanks for checking on that Slick! That's good to know how it currently works.
Very nice quality-of-life enhancement. It's good to be able to quickly see all your tags and then edit as appropriate. Thanks!
Very nice quality-of-life enhancement. It's good to be able to quickly see all your tags and then edit as appropriate. Thanks!
Hi Nick and Slick,
You're right. There's a warning message, but since there's no undo, there should be an additional confirmation prompt. We'll add it. Thanks!
Hi Nick and Slick,
You're right. There's a warning message, but since there's no undo, there should be an additional confirmation prompt. We'll add it. Thanks!
Hi Paolo,
Creating a specific space for tags is the first step to be able to define other types of useful tags in the future (I'll talk about one of them soon).
Tags by themselves already allow for a nested topology (you can use multiple tags on different elements and filter by all or some of them). For that reason, the tree structure does not seem suitable for tags, nor does it seem necessary to do anything special about it.
The feature will be added to the mobile app, but it will take some time.
We will think about the possibility of creating subscriptions of more than one year.
Thank you very much for your suggestions!
Hi Paolo,
Creating a specific space for tags is the first step to be able to define other types of useful tags in the future (I'll talk about one of them soon).
Tags by themselves already allow for a nested topology (you can use multiple tags on different elements and filter by all or some of them). For that reason, the tree structure does not seem suitable for tags, nor does it seem necessary to do anything special about it.
The feature will be added to the mobile app, but it will take some time.
We will think about the possibility of creating subscriptions of more than one year.
Thank you very much for your suggestions!
Thanks Julian! :)
Thanks Julian! :)
I've used the new feature and I'd like to give you some feedback.
It immediately led me to do a (long due) review of my tags, and I cut them down to just 14! Nowadays we can do almost everything everywhere on a phone, so I think i should find a different way of play with the "context" idea (to slice my task list in more "chewable" sub sets).
The Tags page is very useful to reflect on this, but I'd like some statistics in the Analytics section to see which tags I'm not using or using less than the others.
I've used the new feature and I'd like to give you some feedback.
It immediately led me to do a (long due) review of my tags, and I cut them down to just 14! Nowadays we can do almost everything everywhere on a phone, so I think i should find a different way of play with the "context" idea (to slice my task list in more "chewable" sub sets).
The Tags page is very useful to reflect on this, but I'd like some statistics in the Analytics section to see which tags I'm not using or using less than the others.
Hi Paolo,
That's interesting. I've noted your suggestion down to consider later.
Thanks so much! :)
Hi Paolo,
That's interesting. I've noted your suggestion down to consider later.
Thanks so much! :)
Just a small bug concerning tags: the suggestions appearing after typing # in a tasks name dont work with german umlauts (äöü) . Thanks.
Just a small bug concerning tags: the suggestions appearing after typing # in a tasks name dont work with german umlauts (äöü) . Thanks.
Hi Andreas,
It's working fine for me. Please, open a Support ticket within the app so we can see if there's an actual bug. Thanks!
Hi Andreas,
It's working fine for me. Please, open a Support ticket within the app so we can see if there's an actual bug. Thanks!
This is great!
I'd like to be able to easily see which tags are not used at all, then bulk-delete them.
This is great!
I'd like to be able to easily see which tags are not used at all, then bulk-delete them.
Thanks Matthew!
I've noted down your suggestion on our Someday/Maybe list ;)
Thanks Matthew!
I've noted down your suggestion on our Someday/Maybe list ;)