In the classes I often teach on OS X and iOS devices and how to utilize them, a great deal of confusion comes up about the concept of Smart Folders -- or, as they are known in iPhoto and Photos (and elsewhere) Smart Albums; or as they are known in Mail, Smart Mailboxes; or as they are known in iTunes, Smart Playlists. They certainly sound smart, so what does that say about us that we often can't figure them out? How are they different from regular folders, albums, mailboxes, and playlists? Read this edition of Pointers to find out.
The underlying core concept behind all the Smart Things on your Mac is that OS X maintains a database of your files and where the are for Spotlight. Beyond just the file title, the database collects information on the content of files as well as a file's metadata so that it can be found in any number of ways. A regular folder is exactly what it sounds like: a folder where files are actually located. A Smart Folder, as it turns out, isn't a folder (or album, or mailbox, or playlist) at all; it's a customizable search view, showing you the results of a query -- just like a database.
The ugly secret
This is why the concept of Smart Whatevers can be confusing; they are called folders or what have you, but in fact they aren't. Unlike regular folders or mailboxes, nothing gets moved around or re-filed: a Smart Folder (etc) just shows you all the files/music/pictures/mail that matches the query you created, such as "show me all unread email more than two days old" or "show me every file related to Project Gobstopper" or even "show me only the photos that I took with a particular camera with the flash on between 2001-2010."
So, what Smart Folders are, really, are saved searches. You set up a type of search -- songs that are identified by genre as rock and were created between 1965-1975, let's say -- and (in this case) the iTunes Smart Playlist instantly shows you all the songs in the music database iTunes relies on that have the "genre" tag set for "rock," and have origin dates between 1965 and 1975. Much easier than going through and manually identifying the songs that would qualify. The nice thing about the Smart Playlist is that if you were to add songs that fit those conditions, they'll automatically be added to the list -- as they meet the conditions of the search.
Likewise, when you set up a smart mailbox with the conditions "unread mail from the past seven days," you are duly shown a list that fits that description. Of course, if you go and read any of those emails, the next time you look in that Smart Mailbox, they won't be there. Why? Because you read them, and they got automatically marked as read when you did that. So now they're read email, which no longer fits the requirements of the Smart Mailbox's search.
The nice thing about Smart Folders of all sorts is that you can modify the conditions on-the-fly. Let's say you've set up a Smart Mailbox to show you all email from your sister, but only those emails that come from her personal address, not her work address. This involves setting the "all conditions must be met" qualifier, rather than the "any" of the listed conditions must be met. If you've ever worked with Boolean logic or databases, these quantifiers will seem familiar. Smart folders don't support whole-hog regular expressions, like wildcards or the "or" command, but conditions can make the search criteria really specific.
So they're not really folders, or albums, or mailboxes, or playlists?
Now you start to understand why people can find these things confusing: they're conditional searches, not folders at all. Nothing gets moved from where its been put to be inside a "smart folder," and likewise you can't just drag the contents of a Smart Whatever out. It's not a folder, really, so I can't be managed as a folder: the only thing in a Smart Album or Folder
et cetera can do is show you files that meet the conditions you set out, and as soon as they don't anymore (if ever), they're no longer available in that view. The files themselves, however, haven't moved from wherever they were stored. Smart Folders do not move anything around; they are just view of all files, from across the application or OS, that meet your stated criteria.
Let's go with some specific examples, starting with an OS X Smart Folder. A good use of the capability of the Smart Folder is to "gather" in one view all the various emails, maps, web pages, and PDF files you've gathered on the subject of Paris museums for an upcoming trip. You have a map of them all you saved as a image file from Maps or Google Earth; emails with your travel agent and travel partners about the itinerary; pictures of some of the must-hit museums; and bookmarks for the sites.
You could create a Smart Folder that sets the conditions of "show all files related to Paris," but recent versions of OS X have added another way to make organization easier, since a catch-all phrase like "Paris" is probably going to pull in files related to Paris but not related to your trip. Tags can be used as you gather information, and you can tag those files with a keyword like "Paris trip" as you save them (or later). When it comes time to make the Smart Folder, the condition that all files must be tagged "Paris trip" will bring you just the relevant files.
In iTunes, the advantage of Smart Playlists is that they'll continue to grow automatically as you add music that fits the criteria. Let's say you want to create a Smart Playlist of only songs that roll along at between 133 and 188 beats per minute (yes, you can actually get this specific). Sure, you could create a regular playlist and just manually add the songs you know fit that criteria, but isn't this sort of thing exactly why we buy computers? So that
they can do that kind of work? As you add more songs with the BPM tag specified (like purchases from iTunes, or you can add this information in later if you wish), they get added to this Smart Playlist by themslves. Keeps the playlist fresh.
In iPhoto, one of the most common Smart Albums was "all pictures taken in a given year." The new Photos does this by itself, but you might want some other kind of chronological album, let's say "Christmas pictures." You can set up the Smart Album to automatically show all picture captured between December 20-30 of any year, that should do that trick; or you can again use tags with the keyword Xmas or what have you to help you find them later. Works like magic.
Smart Mailboxes rock
But it is in Mail where we think the whole Smart concept really shines. Unlike the Smart Folders, Albums, and Playlists, you probably aren't going to throw most of the photos found by a Smart Folder-typs search away, but with Mail this happens all the time, or the status of the email changes in any event. So for example, in my Mail I have a Smart Mailbox called "unread today," which only shows me the email I haven't yet read in the last 24 hours, and I have another Smart Mailbox called "Unread in the past week," which shows unread email older than 24 hours, but less old that seven days.
I figure if I'm not going to read and act on an email within a week, it wasn't that important. Still, the great thing about these folders is they are constantly changing: "unread today" only shows unread email from
today: if I don't read it or mark it read within 24 hours, it appears in the "Unread in the last week" Smart Mailbox, and disappears from the Unread today smart mailbox. In truth, none of those emails "went" anywhere: they were in my inbox the entire time.
I have another Smart Mailbox for emails from my family: I could have set up a regular mailbox and a rule that said that if any of two siblings or my wife or in-laws sent me an email, redirect it into this "family" mailbox I've created. However, at times, the definition of "family" for me expands or contracts (for example, for a while my definition of "family" included the attorney handling my father's estate). With a Smart Mailbox, all I had to do is add the fellow's name and email to the query, and his emails automatically become visible in the "Family" Smart Mailbox. Great way to keep track of everything he'd sent and what I needed to act on.
Smart Folders or their surrogates in various programs can be a great productivity aid if you take a moment to learn to use them. They're perfect for those times when you'd like to gather some specific items all together in a single view, regardless of where they are on the hard drive, a set of data that doesn't fit neatly into the usual folder/mailbox/playlist/album criteria. They are self-maintaining, and automatically add anything that meets the conditions and removing any listing that doesn't, without putting any of these files at risk of accidental deletion -- because they were never moved from their original "home" folder in the first place.
Top