I am using tags to label all my documents in Finder, and Smart Folders to organise them, but I'm running into a roadblock.
Lets say I have a bunch of documents with the tag "fruits", and some -- but not all -- documents also have additional tags like "apples", "oranges" etc. There is an unknown number of additional tags. I want to create a Smart Folder containing file that have only the fruits tag, and nothing else. How do you do such an exclusive search?
Open a Finder window at the folder in which you wish to search. Press ⌘F to open a Spotlight search window, which will target that folder. There is a drop-down list that will have "Kind" selected:
You will want to change this to "Raw Query", which, if it isn't available in the drop-down list, you can add by selecting "Other..." at the bottom of the list, then selecting it in the panel of search attributes that is presented:
As your raw query, enter the following noting the triple equality:
kMDItemUserTags==='fruits'
Then click "Save" to create your Smart Folder.
Here's a demonstration using the coloured tags in Finder on the contents of the following folder:
This finds files tagged only Green (triple equality):
This finds files tagged Green ± other tags (double equality):
fruits or vegetables (but not both nor any other tag): kMDItemUserTags==='fruits' || kMDItemUserTags==='vegetables'. If you wanted files also tagged fruits or vegetables or both, the closest I can manage is: (kMDItemUserTags==='fruits' || kMDItemUserTags==='vegetables') || (kMDItemUserTags=='fruits' && kMDItemUserTags=='vegetables'), however, this doesn't eliminate files tagged fruits and vegetables and any other tag.