I’d like for a smart group to ignore duplicates if a file is part of a specific group. Is that possible?
Also, more broadly speaking, I’d like to be able to create any smart group with a criteria - not if the item belongs to a certain group.
The only possibility is to exclude groups from searching but that affects of course searching too.
That’s a pity, I hope this can be improved in the future. Apps such as Hazel work with that feature.
Welcome @Druke
Why not just add a tag as an exclusionary criterion?
- In File > Database Properties, enable Inherit Tags of Groups.
- Tag the specific group, e.g., Ignore this. All the child items will inherit the tag.
- Add a Tag is not Ignore this criterion to the smart group.
Would that do what you want?
The smart rule still shows one detected duplicate but it doesn’t show the excluded file.
Without the tag…
With the tag applied to the parent group…
And the smart group…
Any item you add to the tagged parent group would automatically inherit the tag, thus be excluded from this smart group.
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Thanks, I really appreciate your help and the quality of your solution. However, this isn’t for me, as I wouldn’t want to have “ignore this” as tags or any equivalent value for tags. Tags for me are to be informative about the type of content of the file, not to program app behaviour.
You’re simply using “Tag is not” in the smart rule, and you provide it the name of the group you want to exclude. Which could be “barf” or “fubar” or anything at all.
You’d not be “programming app behaviour”, you’d be using it to your advantage.
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Ok, that makes sense I guess
Tags, as well as other attributes, e.g., label colors, flag state, etc., can be used in many different ways.
Also, the tag does not have to be Ignore this. That’s just the example I used. You can use whatever tag you want as long.