Is there an open source, cross platform file tagging system?

I want to organize all my files into a coherent system for a while now but I always run into problems because many of my files fit into many categories and I can’t decide to put them into one folder.
So what I need is a file organization system that works with tags.

The system should be FOSS and available for Linux and Android.
It shouldn’t be a problem to sync the tags along with the files over a E2EE cloud.

The tagging format should be in a way that would be easy to port to another application so its not a hard vendor lock in.

My notes are already organized, so I don’t need any special features regarding them.

Does someone here knows systems/applications that meet these criteria?

4 Likes
1 Like

Putting your files in Nextcloud can help with tagging.

Alternatively, you can try to learn about symlinks for Linux? No idea how it is handled over on Android though, but it should translate the same.

Thank you for linking this
It seems to check most of the boxes but do they also have good android support?

Under Feature in README they say:
Cross-platform – Runs seamlessly on Windows, Linux, and macOS.” so their cross platform support statement does not include Android and they are not publishing on Play Store or F-Droid.

They have a android app published in releases, but I wonder how good the app is working?
Especially when doing search it needs to have some optimizations to not be even slower then the ASOP file explorer.

They have an Android app and its included in the latest releases (which means that its still receiving updates)

Unfortunately, Android and iOS are coming soon.

Is there a reason why they don’t put the tags into file metadata?
Then the tags would always be with the file but it wouldn’t change the file name

Thank you for linking this, but unfortunately they offer no Android app, only .deb for Linux and have paused development, so I can’t hope that they bring it to the platforms I desire any time soon.

Anyway this looks very promising.

I check the discord, the founder is currently forking the project and developing V2. No info on mobile version though.

Do you know why its marked as deprecated on Downloads | TagSpaces?

1 Like

Weird, it was updated 2 days ago

1 Like

Yes, and the Android app is included in the releases so its also getting updates

When you click on the download link for Android it downloads apk and redirects you to this page which says:

The version of the app available on Google Play is quite outdated. To access the latest version, please use the following APK package.

The older version on Google Play is due to a change in their policies, which prevents updates for apps that have access to your device’s file system. Adapting TagSpaces to meet these new requirements would necessitate a significant rewrite of the app, which we are currently unable to undertake.

You can also download SHA256 signatures to check the integrity of the downloaded package.

1 Like

I could a file manager work without access to the file system?

is there any Android GUI for this?

Isn’t this then tied to Nexctloud?

It seems like Tag Spaces is the only developed solution that also has an Android app.
But then I have to chose if I usefile name or sidecar tagging, I think that I would go with the sidecar solution because I am afraid that altering file names can break functionality of other applications or scripts interacting with these files, like for example music players that store playlists in .m3u that are based on file names.

But sidecar files produce other problems:

  1. Tag Spaces says that some cloud providers have problems with syncing sidecar files
  2. If the sidecar files aren’t hidden properly, the polut the folders.
  3. I can’t do a standard name based search targeting the tags like I could do with name based file tagging. THis would be usefull for cases when I can’t search with Tag Spaces directly but want to source with the cloud providers app
1 Like

Just for interest:
Which method of storing tags is used by Nextcloud?

Sorry I dont really use Nextcloud anymore but here is some docs:

Nextcloud is the only thing that comes to mind when it comes to file tagging. When I used it back then, however, I did not use this feature so I cannot give a more thorough recommendation and information on whether there are gotchas in its system.