How to Add a Note to a File or Folder on a Mac

You want to remember why a folder exists, what's left to do in a project or where a contract came from, without opening anything or renaming the file. macOS has a place for that: the Comments field of the Finder's Get Info window. It works, but it's easy to forget it's there. Here's how to use it, where it falls short, and how to keep fuller notes that show up by themselves when you open a folder.

The short answer: in the Finder, select the file or folder, press ⌘I (File › Get Info) and type in the Comments section. The comment stays with the item, and Spotlight can find it. For longer notes, checklists, or a note that appears whenever you open a folder, use the Notes module of Folia Files: open the folder and choose New Note for “folder”, or right-click a file and choose Note….

Add a comment in the Finder

1. Select the file or folder in a Finder window.
2. Choose File › Get Info, or press ⌘I.
3. Find the Comments section (click its arrow if it's closed) and type. Close the window: the comment is kept.

The comment isn't written into the file: its contents stay as they were. macOS keeps it in the item's extended attributes (com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment), and the Finder keeps its own copy in the folder's hidden .DS_Store file. Spotlight indexes comments, so a word you typed there is enough to find the item again.

To see comments without opening Get Info, put the folder in list view, choose View › Show View Options (⌘J) and tick Comments: they appear as a column.

What Finder comments can't do

• You only see them when you look. Nothing in a Finder window tells you an item has a comment, unless that folder shows the Comments column.
• One box of plain text. No checklist, no bold, no headings.
• Two copies that can disagree. Get Info shows what the Finder recorded. A comment that another app writes only in the extended attribute is found by Spotlight, but Get Info may not show it.
• They don't always travel. A comment usually follows the file from Mac to Mac, but an email, an upload or a disk used by another system may keep only the file's contents.

The usual workarounds have their own catch. A text file named README in the folder goes everywhere the folder goes, but it's one more file, and you have to open it to read it. A tag with a name, such as “To print” or “Waiting for client”, shows in every Finder window and in searches, but it holds a few words, not a note. And if all you need is to spot a folder at a glance, a color or an icon may be enough.

Read and edit Finder comments in Folia Files

Folia Files shows the same comment, and lets you change it, in Info:

1. Select one file or folder in a pane.
2. Press ⌘I (File › Info) for its Info window, or ⌃⌘I (File › Show Info Module) for the Info module in the right sidebar, which follows whatever you select.
3. Type in the Comments section. The comment is saved when you leave the field or press ⌘↩; Esc puts the previous one back.

In the version from the website, Folia Files asks the Finder to save the comment, so Get Info shows it too. The first time, macOS may ask whether Folia Files can control the Finder. If you refuse, the comment is still saved for Spotlight and Folia Files, and a line under the field says that the Finder may not show it. The App Store version can't send commands to the Finder: it saves the comment in the extended attribute only, and the first time, a line under the field says that the Finder may not show it.

Keep real notes with the Notes module

For more than a line, Folia Files has a Notes module: as many notes as you like, saved as you type (there is no Save button and no question when you quit), with checklists, bullet and numbered lists, titles, bold, italic, underline and a highlighter in six colors. It's one of the modules you can place beside your folders.

To add it, show the right sidebar (View › Show Right Sidebar, ⌥⌘E), click Modules above it and tick Notes. You can also give it a whole pane: drag New Pane to an edge of the window and choose Notes in the grid. Click the note's title at the top of the module to switch to another note, start a new one or delete one.

A note for a folder, shown when you open it

1. Open the folder in the active pane.
2. In the Notes module, click the note's title (or the module's gear) and choose New Note for “folder”, with the folder's name.
3. Write: what's left to do in the project, where the photos come from, who gets the invoices.

From then on, the module shows that note whenever the active pane opens the folder, and goes back to your other note when you leave. A small folder icon next to the note's title tells you it belongs to a folder.

A note for a file

Since version 1.2.5, files can have a note too:

1. Right-click the file and choose Note…, just after Info.
2. The Notes module opens on that file's note (it's added to the right sidebar if it wasn't anywhere yet). Type.

When you select the file again later, its note comes back in the module, and once the note has some text, the menu item reads Show Note. In list views and search results, files and folders that have a note show a small note mark after their name, so you know there's something to read before you open anything.

The module's gear has Show the Note of the Selected File or Open Folder, on from the start: turn it off to keep the module on the note you're writing whatever you select. Detach from File (or Detach from Folder) turns a note into an ordinary one.

Where notes are kept

Notes stay on your Mac, in Folia Files' folder of the Library (Application Support), one small file per note. Nothing is written into your files or folders. The flip side: a note doesn't leave Folia Files on this Mac. If you send the file to someone or open the folder on another Mac, the note doesn't go with it; for that, a Finder comment or a README is the better choice.

When you rename or move an item in Folia Files, its note follows it, and so do the notes of everything inside a moved folder. If the Finder or another app renames or moves it, Folia Files can't know: the note stays with the old location, and you still find it in the module's list of notes, under Folder Notes or File Notes.

Which one to use

• A short remark that must travel with the file and be found by Spotlight: a Finder comment, typed in Get Info or in Folia Files' Info.
• A checklist, a longer note, or something you want to see each time you open a folder or select a file: a note in Folia Files' Notes module.