XYplorer offers tag-based file management as an alternative to the hierarchical tree-based file management. You can assign any number of tags to any file or folder. Yes, any file, not just document and media files.

Working from the Toolbar

The tags are saved between sessions, you can view them in the Tags column of the Details pane, they can be displayed in the File Info Tips, and you can search for files by them (with all the Boolean glory, and extremely fast because these searches are indexed). Assigning tags can be done comfortably from a tag list, which can be opened with toolbar buttons.

Toolbar buttons for adding, setting (new), removing and searching tags. The buttons display a list of tags (also known as a "tag cloud"), which can be generated automatically and/or manually.

Working from the Tags tab

The Info Panel (F12) includes a Tags tab that provides an intuitive, all-in-one interface for adding, editing, and viewing tags (i.e., labels, actual tags, and comments).

The Tags tab in the Info Panel can be used to view and edit tags. (Click to enlarge)

Looking for Monkeys

Here's an example showing some tagged files. The tags are listed alphabetically in the Tags column. The File Info Tip when hovering over the file also shows the Label, Tags, and Comment information (optional):

Now let's search for files with the tag "Ape". Simply select "Ape" from the drop-down menu of the blue Search by Tags toolbar button. "Search This Branch" is checked because we only want to search the current branch for now.

And here are all the monkeys in the current branch:

Now let's search for "Ape" everywhere. Select "Search Everywhere" from the drop-down menu, then select "Ape" again. And here's all the monkeys in the whole computer. As you can see, some were found in a network location:

The entire search (across the entire computer and local network!) took 28.5 milliseconds. Not bad at all.

Technical Background

The tags are stored in a database file named "tag.dat" located in the application data folder. This file is a plain text file (UTF-16LE encoded) containing all the data in an open, simple and human-friendly format. You can open it in any text editor to review or even manually edit its contents. This makes it future-proof and accessible to other applications.

Links to Further Documentation