Color folders of one level?

Hi, I’d like to highlight the folders of one level in the hierarchy structure of my folders (like in Finder on the Mac) with colors. Is this possible? Will it be?

I just do it by hand :-/ This would be a nice feature, I think.

It’s not exactly like the Finder but you could apply labels which colorize the icon.

Thanks. Yes, the labels are ok but visually the finder-in-mac labels are more convincing and give more visual structure. Here I get the folder in color but the rest of the text (which is right on top of the titles of the next hierarchy) remains black like everything in the next hierarchy. It’s visually not quite convincing, not enough hard edge, too blurry - I think it’d be a nice feature to change/add.

How do you do it by hand? something different from DTP labels?

Aha! This makes for some interesting comments on UI, personal preferences and the fact that Label colors are searchable in DEVONthink.

I wouldn’t use Label colors to mark hierarchical levels in my database. One reason is that I tend to regard a color marker as a shout for attention, and so I use colors very sparingly so that I don’t “hear” too many shouts – too many shouts become a meaningless uproar. I feel the same way about highlighting in text. But that’s just a personal preference.

A much more important point is that Label colors are searchable in DEVONthink. That means they can have a logical function in filtering information in my database. If I were to assign different label colors for the second and third hierarchy levels in my database I could search for all groups that are located at the third level. But – at least in my database structure – that’s not at all informative.

Because Labels are searchable, I use them as tags to mark things that I may want to refer to in the course of working on a project. When drafting, I break a writing project into several documents corresponding to topical sections. I’ll duplicate or replicate important references into my project groups. I may use a Label color or a State to tag a draft section that is incomplete or needs to be redone. I may use Label colors on reference and notes documents to designate their importance, perhaps for a particular topic, perhaps at the time I’m using searches, See Also and other methods to identify material useful for the project; that allows me to quickly search for such tagged material by Label color.

When I’m finished with that project I do a search for all the labeled items in my database and convert them back to the “none” Label state. That’s because I want to start fresh for my next project, as the Labels (and/or States) used for one project will almost certainly not be useful for the next project.

There are only 7 Label colors. Once in a while I may want to extend my temporary tagging scheme beyond those possibilities. If so, I can add the State tag, which is also searchable. For example, an item that’s tagged with a Green Label could also have any of three States, Any, On or Off. As a practical matter, I’ve never exhausted the tagging possibilities of Labels and States. But if so, I could add the logical potentials of the Locking state.

Using Labels and States as temporary tags for a project is much quicker – to apply and to remove – than adding text to the Comment field of documents.

Thank you, that’s very helpful! Just one (probably stupid) question: how do you search for labeled items? A specific search term? I tried a few things but didn’t find the solution.

As I put my GTD projects per group into “Areas of Focus” (1st hierarchy level), I’d still love to use a (non screaming) color in Mac finder-style for these “Areas of Focus”, to have a better overview on one glance

Use the Search window (Tools > Search). In the left column the default for Label is Any. Click on the button to select none or any of the seven colors.

I generally use the Search window to perform searches instead of the little search field in view and document windows. There are more options available in the Search window, and the settings can easily be viewed.

Tip: Want to initiate a search in your database for a term or phrase in the text you are reading? Just select the term or phase and press Command-/ – (Lookup) – note that this command is available in all Cocoa applications, including your database itself. The DEVONthink Search window will open with the query text already inserted. (The Lookup command is available in Safari, of course, but not in Firefox.)

Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying. :blush:

Thanks, that worked fine, also the “lookup”! I’d still love to see mac folder colors sometime in the future in addition to the labels :wink:

You can select the folder icon of a group in its Info panel and paste from the clipboard the image of a differently colored folder. Perhaps you could at least partially automate that using Automator.