System: macOS 11.6.1, MBP 2019 16in
I’m having a persistent difficulty with sure tags. I’ve a tag, name it "submit", that I take advantage of as a toggle. I set it on information that I would like to seek out to add to a sure cloud website. I set it on information that I would like to connect to an e mail. I set it on information that I must ship in a presentation. After I’ve achieved the motion with the information, I unset the tag.
The tag resides in my sidebar as a favourite. It’s coloured yellow.
My drawback is, the tag generally refuses to be unset. It refuses to be unset in a reasonably disturbing method. It refuses to be unset to vanish from the favourite record but it surely reveals no tag within the Finder record view. Here’s a view with the ghost-tagged file and a valid-tagged file.
I’ve tried these 4 choices:
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I’ve toggled the submit tag on and off to the file utilizing the favorites view. Whereas I do that, I see the xattr com.apple.FinderInfo and com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags toggle on and off (see additional under).
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I added the folder containing the file to the Highlight "don’t search" choice pane (Privateness) to delete the Highlight index. The ghost-tagged file disappeared from the favorites record. I rebooted. I eliminated the folder from the Highlight don’t index record. The ghost-tagged file reappears.
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I used varied approaches with xattr to view the meta attributes and take away them with -dr. I discovered that I may take away all xattr traits. The ghost-tagged file appeared to drop from the favorites. However once I clicked to a distinct favourite tag and returned to the submit tag … there was the ghost-tagged file once more and it had completely no meta-xattr settings.
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I’ve deleted the submit tag solely utilizing the Finder preferences. I then created a brand new tag with the identical title. The ghost-tagged file reappears.
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I used OnyX to take away the Highlight index file.
A slight wrinkle maybe. I’ve my inner exhausting drive partitioned into three volumes. A number of the above catastrophe occurs with information which can be on different volumes.
One other slight wrinkle maybe. I’m utilizing DevonThink to index parts of the exterior quantity that comprise the information. I regarded on the DT database for the tag. It reveals no file is contained in that tag.
What puzzles me primarily is what else I must be doing to purge the ghost tag definitively. Ought to I boot into secure mode to purge one thing? Ought to I rinse the file by means of some secondary app to take away the tag (the information are primarily PDFs, and I’ve rw entry to them as seen within the Finder data field)?
My studying suggests this may increasingly an issue with out a solution, or the reply is pretty deeply hidden. Any ideas can be appreciated, even when solely to substantiate that this thriller is simply a kind of hidden gems in utilizing macOS.

