Automatically Loading and Saving Finder Tags

Many people use the Finder's tagging mechanism to retain additional information on audio files. There are action statements to read and write the tags to track variables.

In Settings - General there are settings to control the auto reading and/or writing of Finder tags. The settings are configured by pressing the Finder Tags button in the Settings - General panel.

In order to auto/read or write Finder tags, there must be a custom field named Finder Tags. There is a button in the panel to create the custom field. By default, the Finder Tags custom field will only be displayed on the All Tags edit panel. It can be displayed on a custom edit panel.

There is an action on the resources web page named Manage Finder Tags. The documentation for this action explains how to set up an application list to work in conjunction with the custom field and describes various actions which are provided to extend the functionality of the field. If you have installed Manage Finder Tags, you will already have the required custom field. The same action also describes how to install a provided custom edit panel for the field.

The Multi Value Delimiter (;;;) is used to separate tags in the field.

The Automatically process Finder tags control has the following settings:

Never: Finder tags are not automatically loaded or saved.
When Files are Loaded: Whenever an audio file is loaded, the current Finder tags associated with the file will be saved to the Finder Tags custom field. Note that manual changes to the Finder tags after a file is loaded will not be reflected in the Finder Tags field.
When Files are Saved: Whenever an audio file is saved, the tags specified in the Finder Tags custom field will automatically be saved to the Finder. The tags are written and re-read to ensure that any changes made by the Finder (such as duplicate removal) are reflected in the fields.
When Files are Loaded and Saved: Auto loading and saving will occur.

Note that as a long term workflow more than likely the only values that make sense are Never and When Files are Loaded and Saved.

When automatically saving Finder tags, you have a few additional available settings:

Sort the tags: You can optionally sort the tags before they are written to the Finder.
Loved: You can optionally enter a name of a tag to be written if the track is loved.
Disliked: You can optionally enter a name of a tag to be written if the track is disliked.

Note that if either of Loved or Disliked has a tag name, the appropriate tags will be added and the inappropriate tags will be removed.