| Left side results [message #1995] |
Sat, 21 March 2026 17:35  |
Geiri
Messages: 4
Registered: February 2026
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Junior Member |
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Hi, When I use the search function in the application, various panels appear on the left side with different kinds of information, such as By Author, By Main Language, By Visibility, etc.
First, I would like to ask if it is possible to set which of these panels are shown by default and which ones are hidden. Some of them are simply not useful for my workflow, so it would be great to customize this.
Second, the tags such as By Author, By Main Language, and By Date are very often incorrect, and it is sometimes difficult to determine where in the file this metadata is being pulled from. It would be a great addition to Foxtrot if users could edit this metadata, especially if it were possible to edit multiple files at once. This would help users keep their databases organized and up to date.
I would really appreciate it if you could consider this feature.
Otherwise, thank you very much for a great application.
Best Regards
Þorgeir Valur Ellertsson
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| Re: Left side results [message #1996 is a reply to message #1995] |
Mon, 23 March 2026 09:33  |
FoxTrot Engineering
Messages: 431
Registered: April 2020
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Senior Member |
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Just untick the checkbox on the header of the categorizers you don't use, and they will stay collapsed. Furthermore, the last categorizers used will always appear above those you never used.
The "tags" categorizer shows the tags assigned from the Finder.
"Author" is a Spotlight metadata attribute (or actually a concatenation of several Spotlight attributes), whose value depends on the file type. It may have been explicitly defined by the person who created the document, or it could be assigned automatically from the name of the macOS account etc. Those attributes are:
kMDItemAuthors
kMDItemContactKeywords
kMDItemComposer
kMDItemLyricist
kMDItemOrganizations
kMDItemPhoneNumbers
kMDItemEmailAddresses
kMDItemInstantMessageAddresses
kMDItemRecipients
kMDItemPhoneNumbers
"Main Language" is the language that has been automatically identified when indexing the document.
"Date" is either the file modification date, or its creation date (you can toggle using the gear popup menu on the right).
Note that FoxTrot always uses the metadata values at indexation time; i.e. if you change the tags of a file from the Finder, you will need to update your index afterwards. Also, you can't arbitrarily change these metadata (except for the Finder tags), they are usually derived from the file contents by Spotlight importers.
Jérôme - FoxTrot Engineering
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| Re: Left side results [message #1997 is a reply to message #1996] |
Thu, 26 March 2026 22:21 |
Geiri
Messages: 4
Registered: February 2026
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Junior Member |
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Thank you for your replay.
In my case all the documents are pdf and 95% of them are in Icelandi, still the main language on most of my documents are sett to be Italian, Portuguese and Norweigian are also common.
The author seems to be a bit random, but in many cases it is right but other not so much.
The categories, Location, visibility, extension, item kind and tag have no meaning for me. But Search sources do.
Working on a laptop all the collapsed tapes take up space, and beacause of them I can't see the complete Search sources list.
Best regards
Þorgeir Valur
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